Traditionally, cases are published, or reported, in a series of books called reporters.

Reporters contain the written decisions of the court. They do not contain transcripts of arguments or trials, nor do they contain the briefs submitted by the parties.

• Reporters are organized in chronological order by date of decision.
• Reporters are published by geographical location (e.g. a state reporter) or by jurisdiction (e.g. all United States District Court decisions).
• Most jurisdictions have an "official" reporter that is governmentally approved.

For example, opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court are "officially" reported in the United States Reports, which is published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

Commercial publishers are "unofficial" reporters and usually publish cases before the official versions.

The text of the court's opinion is the same, but each publisher adds proprietary editorial matter. The citation given by one of these publishers is called a parallel citation.