Public Laws Digests for Case Law Digests are indexes for case opinions published in reports. West Publishing Co. West's publishing philosophy is to report all of the opinions of all appellate level courts for state jurisdictions and to publish all opinions submitted to it by all levels of the federal courts. The researcher should also be aware that not all decisions from a court will be reported and subsequently digested.
Courts issue many rulings and decisions that are never reproduced or otherwise indexed.
Courts may designate opinions as not for publication in which case they will not be reproduced by West. The researcher should study the court rules for any restrictions on citing to opinions designated as not for publication. There are a few subject digests, such as West's Bankruptcy Digest , but generally the West's digest are categorized by jurisdiction. Examples are the Washington Digest , the Federal Practice Digest , or the Pacific Digest . Look up your term in the Descriptive Word Index.