West American Digest System

The system was developed by West Publishing to organize the entire body of American law.

First, his company began to regularly publish cases from many American jurisdictions in bound volumes called reporters (the West National Reporter System now covers all state and federal appellate courts, as well as certain trial courts).

Second, he put together a classification system in which he divided the law into major categories which he called topics (such as "Contracts").

In 1870, Little, Brown hired brothers Benjamin and Austin Abbott to start over and prepare a new series of the United States Digest from scratch.

The headnotes are arranged according to their topic and key number in multi-volume sets of books called Digests.

A digest serves as a subject index to the case law published in West reporters.

Some of the state and topical digests are revised to include the first cases in the jurisdiction, while the spines of the books of some of the other digests indicate that they are from "1933 to date," for instance, indicating that one must consult a prior series for references to earlier cases.

The state, federal, regional, and topical digests are updated by interim pamphlets, pocket parts, replacement volumes, or a new series.

Researchers can also search the digest electronically using Westlaw: Most secondary sources published by Thomson West, such as Corpus Juris Secundum and American Jurisprudence, also have key number hyperlinks in their online Westlaw versions.

Digest, accompanying the American Law Reports, formerly had its own classification system, but was replaced in 2004 by West's American Law Reports Digest, which follows West's topic and key number system.