Every Court decision is first published as a Slip Opinion , essentially an individual pamphlet. When enough of these have appeared, the opinions are reprinted as paperbound, Official Reports of the Supreme Court . Eventually, hard-bound permanent volumes are issued. As a federal depository library, Renne Library has a complete set of United States Reports . The First and Second Series of the Lawyer's Edition together constitute a complete but unofficial record of Supreme Court decisions.
Decisions are in chronological order.
Subject access to the complete set is provided by a separate, companion set of books called U.S. Supreme Court Reports Digest . As with the official United States Reports , opinions are published first as softbound advance sheets. At the end of each Court term, decisions and their accompanying annotations are reprinted as hardbound permanent volumes. There are two major advantages to the Lawyer's Edition over the U.S. Reports . First, decisions appear more quickly.