PREFACE. IN conformity with the interpretation generally placed upon. the acts regulating the manner of reporting the decisions of the Supreme Court, in force prior to the last session of the General Assembly, my predecessors considered themselves bound to publish a report of every case determined by the court. Under a system of jurisprudence which allows an appeal to the Supreme Court, in every civil case in which the amount in dispute exceeds a small sum, at the discretion of the party, and on questions of fact as well as of law, the publication of every decision necessarily led to the rapid and expensive accumulation of volume upon volume, increasing in a ratio proportioned to the augmentation of the population and business of the country, and to the consequent multiplication of its laws. The continuance of this practice is to be deprecated, not only as entailing a heavy annual expense upon the state and the profession, but, in as much as a large proportion of every volume must unavoidably consist of matter of little or no value, as calculated to diminish the usefulness of the reports of the really important cases, by burying them in a mass of unprofitable matter, rendering them at once more expensive to be purchased, and more inconvenient for use when obtained. The publication of the five last volumes of the Louisiana Reports within the short space of fourteen months,* drew the attention of the Legislature to this subject, and probably led to the insertion of a clause in an act passed at its last session, investing the judges of that court with the power of omitting certain classes of cases of no value to the profession or to the public. The third section of that act (of the 26th March, 1842,) provides, "that it shall be the duty of the judges of the Supreme Court, whenever they pronounce an opinion in any case, to determine at the same time whether the same shall be reported; provided, that every case in which an opinion is pronounced shall be ordered to be reported, * The 15th volume was published, in Jauuary, 1841; the 19th, in March, 1842. |