Digest

A compilation arranged in an orderly manner. The name is given to a great variety of topical compilations, abridgments, and analytical indices of reports, statutes, etc. When reference is made to the Digest, the Pandects of Justinian are intended, they being the authoritative compilation of the civil law. As to this Digest and the mode of citing it, see Pandects. Other digests are referred to by their distinctive names. For some account of digests of the civil and canon law, and those of Indian law, see Civil Law, Code, and Canon Law. The digests of English and American law are for the most part deemed not authorities, but simply manuals of reference, by which the reader may find his way to the original cases which are authorities.

1 Burr. 364; 2 Wils. 1, 2.

Some of them, however, which have been the careful work of scholarly lawyers, possess an independent value as original repositories of the law. Bacon's Abridgment, which has long been deservedly popular in this country, and Comyns's Digest, also often cited, are examples of these. The earlier English digests are those of Statham (Hen. VI.), Fitzherbert, 1516, Brooke, 1573, Rolle, Danvers, Nelson, Viner, and Petersdorf. Of these Rolle and Viner are still not infrequently cited, and some others rarely. The several digests by Coventry & Hughes, Harrison, Fisher, Jacobs, and Chitty, together with the subsequent annual digests of Emden and of Mews, afford a convenient index for the American reader to the English reports. In most of the United States one or more • digests of the state reports have been published, and in some of them digests or topical arrangements of the statutes. There are also digests of the federal statutes. 'The American Digest, Century Edition, covers the reports of the federal and state courts from 1658 to 1896, inclusive, brought down to cover 1906 by the Decennial Edition, and brought down to date by the American Digest, Key-Number Series. The Federal Reporter Digest digests the series of Federal Reporters to vol. 200 and the United States Supreme Court decisions from vols. 106 to 225 U. S., comprised in vols.

21-32 Supreme Court Reporter.

The latter, to 225 U. S., are also digested in the Digest of United States Supreme Court Reports. Dane's Abridgment of American Law has been commended by high authority (Story's article in N. Am. Rev. July, 1826), but it has not maintained a position as a work of general use. There are also numerous digests of cases on particular titles of the law.