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| Company type | Charity/not-for-profit |
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| Industry | Law reporting and publishing |
| Founded | London, England February 1865 |
| Founder | W. T. S. Daniel Q.C. |
| Headquarters | London, England |
Area served | England and Wales |
Key people | Richard Fleck CBE (Chairman) T. H. W. Piper Esq. (Vice-chairman) Kevin Laws (CEO) Brendan Wright (Editor) |
| Products | ICLR Online The Law Reports Weekly Law Reports Industrial Cases Reports The Business Law Reports The Public and Third Sector Law Reports |
Number of employees | 60 |
| Website | iclr.co.uk |
The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR) is a registered charity based in London, England, that publishes law reports of English law. The company is widely recognised as a reputable producer of reports (and the only 'official' source), which are used by students, academics, journalists, lawyers and judges across the country. [1]
The ICLR was founded in 1865 by W. T. S. Daniel QC, and its first meeting took place on 25 February at Westminster Hall, [2] then the home of the Court of King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of Chancery. The council was incorporated under the Companies Act 1862 in 1870. [2]
Largely working "as a private enterprise without state aid or interference", [2] the council "was not intended to be profit making except in so far as it was necessary to make it self-supporting." [2] Working on this principle, the council applied in 1966 for registration to become an official charity under section 4 of the Charities Act 1960 (8 & 9 Eliz. 2. c. 58). [3] Upon rejection by the Charity Commission the council appealed under section 5(3) of the 1960 act, an action granted by Mr Justice Foster in the Chancery Division of the High Court. [3] On appeal by the Inland Revenue to the Court of Appeal, who were joint defendants with the Attorney General, it was held that "the Council was established for exclusively charitable purposes since its purpose was to further the development and administration of the law and to make it known or accessible to all members of the community, which was a purpose beneficial to the community and of general public utility." [3] In 1970, then, the ICLR was successfully registered as a charity in England and Wales. [2]
Currently chaired by Richard Fleck CBE, the ICLR's council consists of members nominated by each of the Inns of Court and by the General Council of the Bar, and is based on Chancery Lane, London. [4]
According to the company's memorandum of association, the ICLR was established with the following principal aim:
The preparation and publication, in a convenient form, at a moderate price, and under gratuitous professional control, of [The Law] Reports of Judicial Decisions of the Superior and Appellate Courts in England and Wales. [5]
The ICLR also has a set of criteria for law reporting, originally proposed by Nathaniel Lindley (who later became Master of the Rolls and subsequently a Lord of Appeal), which said that care should be taken to exclude from the reports those cases that passed without discussion and were valueless as precedents, and those that were substantially repetitions of earlier reports [6] to which was added the following list of valuable (and thus worthy of reporting) categories:
- All cases which introduce, or appear to introduce, a new principle or a new rule.
- All cases which materially modify an existing principle or rule.
- All cases which settle, or materially tend to settle, a question upon which the law is doubtful.
- All cases which for any reason are peculiarly instructive. [6]
The primary series of reports published by the ICLR is The Law Reports, which the council maintains are "'the most authoritative reports' and should always be 'cited in preference where there is a choice'." [7] This series is divided into four main sub-series:
Additional reports published by the ICLR include The Weekly Law Reports (W.L.R.), [22] started in 1953 [23] and covering what the ICLR describe as "the cases that really matter, which either develop the law in some way or introduce a new point of law"; [22] the Industrial Cases Reports (I.C.R.), [24] started in 1975 [25] and covering cases of employment law heard in the House of Lords, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, the Employment Appeal Tribunal and the European Court of Justice, as well as "cases of special interest" from the Privy Council, the Court of Session and employment tribunals; [24] The Business Law Reports (Bus. L.R.), [26] started in 2007 [27] and covering company, commercial and intellectual property law; [26] and The Public and Third Sector Law Reports (P.T.S.R.), [28] started in 2009 [29] and covering issues such as adoption, charity, ecclesiastical law, education, environmental law, health law, housing, human rights, local government, public health law and social welfare. [28]
It also published annual volumes of U.K. legislation from 1866 to 2010. [30]
Most of its reports were available electronically on Westlaw and LexisNexis until the beginning of 2017, when the ICLR instead published its reports exclusively on its platform.
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In the field of jurisprudence, equity is the particular body of law, developed in the English Court of Chancery, with the general purpose of providing legal remedies for cases wherein the common law is inflexible and cannot fairly resolve the disputed legal matter. Conceptually, equity was part of the historical origins of the system of common law of England, yet is a field of law separate from common law, because equity has its own unique rules and principles, and was administered by courts of equity.
English law is the common law legal system of England and Wales, comprising mainly criminal law and civil law, each branch having its own courts and procedures.
The Court of Appeal is the highest court within the Senior Courts of England and Wales, and second in the legal system of England and Wales only to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The Court of Appeal was created in 1875, and today comprises 39 Lord Justices of Appeal and Lady Justices of Appeal.
The Courts of England and Wales, supported administratively by His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service, are the civil and criminal courts responsible for the administration of justice in England and Wales.
A consistory court is a type of ecclesiastical court, especially within the Church of England where they were originally established pursuant to a charter of King William the Conqueror, and still exist today, although since about the middle of the 19th century consistory courts have lost much of their subject-matter jurisdiction. Each diocese in the Church of England has a consistory court.
Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported. Case citations are formatted differently in different jurisdictions, but generally contain the same key information.
In the history of the courts of England and Wales, the Judicature Acts were a series of acts of Parliament, beginning in the 1870s, which aimed to fuse the hitherto split system of courts of England and Wales. The first two acts were the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 and the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1875, with a further series of amending acts.
The All England Law Reports are a long-running series of law reports covering cases from the court system in England and Wales.
Law reports or reporters are series of books that contain judicial opinions from a selection of case law decided by courts. When a particular judicial opinion is referenced, the law report series in which the opinion is printed will determine the case citation format.
The High Court of Ireland is a court which deals at first instance with the most serious and important civil and criminal cases. When sitting as a criminal court it is called the Central Criminal Court and sits with judge and jury. It also acts as a court of appeal for civil cases in the Circuit Court. It also has the power to determine whether or not a law is constitutional, and of judicial review over acts of the government and other public bodies.
A prerogative court is a court through which the discretionary powers, privileges, and legal immunities reserved to the sovereign were exercised. In England in the 17th century, a clash developed between these courts, representing the crown's authority, and common law courts. Prerogative courts included the Court of the Exchequer, the Court of Chancery, and the Court of the Star Chamber. Their procedures were flexible and not limited by common law procedures. The Star Chamber became a tool of Charles I employed against his enemies, and was abolished by parliament. A parallel system of common law courts was grounded in Magna Carta and property rights; the main common law courts were the Court of the King's Bench and the Court of Common Pleas.
There are various levels of judiciary in England and Wales—different types of courts have different styles of judges. They also form a strict hierarchy of importance, in line with the order of the courts in which they sit, so that judges of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales are given more weight than district judges sitting in county courts and magistrates' courts. On 1 April 2020 there were 3,174 judges in post in England and Wales. Some judges with United Kingdom-wide jurisdiction also sit in England and Wales, particularly Justices of the United Kingdom Supreme Court and members of the tribunals judiciary.
The nominate reports, also known as nominative reports, named reports and private reports, are the various published collections of law reports of cases in English courts from the Middle Ages to the 1860s.
The Court of King's Bench, formally known as The Court of the King Before the King Himself, was a court of common law in the English legal system. Created in the late 12th to early 13th century from the curia regis, the King's Bench initially followed the monarch on his travels. The King's Bench finally joined the Court of Common Pleas and Exchequer of Pleas in Westminster Hall in 1318, making its last travels in 1421. The King's Bench was merged into the High Court of Justice by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873, after which point the King's Bench was a division within the High Court. The King's Bench was staffed by one Chief Justice and usually three Puisne Justices.
The Law Reports is the name of a series of law reports published by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting.
The High Court of Justice in London, known properly as His Majesty's High Court of Justice in England, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, are the Senior Courts of England and Wales. Its name is abbreviated as EWHC for legal citation purposes.
Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn were constructed from 1774 to 1780. The architect was Sir Robert Taylor. Stone Buildings is a Grade I listed building. Stone Buildings appear in Anthony Trollope's novel The Prime Minister.
Certain former courts of England and Wales have been abolished or merged into or with other courts, and certain other courts of England and Wales have fallen into disuse.
The King's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice deals with a wide range of common law cases and has supervisory responsibility over certain lower courts.
