Definition
A report is a formal statement — written or oral — of facts, findings, or proceedings made by a person or body with authority or duty to communicate them. The term carries distinct meanings depending on context:
1. Judicial proceedings. A written statement filed with a court by an officer appointed to investigate and report on a specific matter — a master in chancery, referee, or similar appointee — summarizing findings and often recommending action. The court may adopt, modify, or reject the report.
2. Case reporters. Published volumes (typically appearing periodically) containing accounts of cases argued and decided in a given court or jurisdiction. The term is most commonly encountered in the plural ("reports") in this sense. These are the foundational source materials of common law research.
3. Administrative and regulatory contexts. A formal submission required by statute or regulation — filed by a business, agency, or individual — disclosing specified information to a government authority. Examples include workplace injury reports, financial disclosures, and environmental compliance filings.
4. Legislative and governmental contexts. A formal document issued by a legislative committee, commission, or agency communicating findings, recommendations, or conclusions on a specific subject. Committee reports are primary sources for statutory interpretation.
5. General usage in practice. Any formal written account prepared in a professional or official capacity: expert reports, audit reports, medical-legal reports, and the like.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A piece of information describing or an account of certain events given or presented to someone; also, reputation, or the sound from a gun or explosion.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To bring back an answer; to relate what has been discovered by a person sent to examine or investigate; to make an official account of.
The common meaning — an account or description of events — overlaps substantially with most legal uses. The meaningful gap appears at the edges: in legal contexts, a "report" frequently carries procedural significance (it is filed with a tribunal, triggers a deadline, or constitutes a required disclosure), and a "consumer report" under statutes like the FCRA has a specific technical definition that differs sharply from the ordinary sense of "report about a person." Researchers should not assume that statutory use of the word tracks its plain meaning.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Case Reports (Law Reports): Published accounts of judicial decisions; the backbone of common law research. Unofficial and official reporters carry different citation weight depending on jurisdiction.
Master's/Referee's Report: A formal submission by a court-appointed officer to the presiding court, summarizing the results of an inquiry or hearing on referred matters.
Committee Report (Legislative): A document produced by a legislative committee explaining the purpose and intent of proposed or enacted legislation. Used in statutory construction.
Consumer Report: A defined term under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) — a communication by a consumer reporting agency bearing on a consumer's creditworthiness, character, or personal characteristics for specified permissible purposes. Tightly regulated; not coextensive with any informal use of "report."
Regulatory/Compliance Report: A submission to a government agency required by statute or rule (e.g., OSHA injury and illness reports, SEC filings). Failure to file or filing a false report carries statutory consequences.
Expert Report: A written statement by a designated expert witness setting forth opinions and the basis for them, typically required under civil procedure rules before trial.
Why It Matters in Research
The word "report" is one of the most contextually variable terms in legal research, and that variability creates real traps.
In historical sources, "reports" most often means case reporters — the published decisions of courts. When Burrill and Black's refer to reports, they are primarily describing what lawyers today call reporters or case law. A researcher reading a 19th-century treatise reference to "2 Durn. & East's Reports" must recognize this as a citation to a case reporter, not a modern regulatory filing.
The shift in dominant meaning matters: modern legal research uses "report" far more frequently in the regulatory and administrative sense than historical dictionaries anticipated. OSHA recordkeeping obligations, FCRA consumer report requirements, and agency rulemaking records all turn on precise statutory definitions of what constitutes a "report" — definitions that are jurisdiction- and statute-specific and should not be imported from one regulatory scheme to another.
For case law research, the distinction between official and unofficial reporters affects citation practice and sometimes weight of authority. Some jurisdictions have discontinued official reporters entirely; others designate specific publications as authoritative. Knowing whether a "report" is the official record of a decision or a commercial reprint matters for citation rules.
Legislative committee reports occupy a special position in statutory interpretation: courts treat them as authoritative evidence of legislative intent in some interpretive frameworks and as largely irrelevant in others (textualist approaches discount them). A researcher using committee reports to interpret a statute should be aware of this methodological divide.
Expert reports in civil litigation exist at the intersection of procedure and evidence. Procedural rules (such as Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26) impose specific content and timing requirements; failure to comply can result in exclusion of the expert entirely. The "report" here is a term of art with consequences independent of what the document actually says.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary converge on two core meanings: the court-officer report (master's or referee's written findings) and the published case reporter. Burrill adds useful context with the Latin root reportus and the characterization of a report as "a public account or relation of a case judicially argued and determined." This framing reflects the era's primary use of the term — case law was the dominant legal authority, and "reports" meant case reports.
The historical dictionaries say little about regulatory or administrative reports. That absence is not an oversight — the modern administrative state, with its dense reporting obligations, did not yet exist in the form that generates most contemporary uses of the term. Researchers should not expect Burrill or Black's to illuminate FCRA "consumer reports" or OSHA recordkeeping requirements.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry included in the source material appears to describe a conveyancing precedent rather than a "report" per se — likely a mismatch in the source data. It adds nothing to the term's meaning here.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law material similarly appears to be mismatched source content and does not illuminate "report" directly.
Jurisdictional Note
The term's meaning in regulatory contexts is entirely statute-dependent and varies significantly across federal and state schemes. "Consumer report" under the FCRA has a specific federal definition that does not automatically apply under state consumer protection laws, some of which are broader. OSHA reporting obligations differ for federal and state-plan jurisdictions. Researchers should always locate the controlling statutory or regulatory definition for the specific scheme at issue rather than relying on a general understanding of the word.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
OSHA Recordkeeping and Reporting Requirements — Employment & Labor Law Encyclopedia
Consumer Protection — Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) — Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia
Background Checks and the Fair Credit Reporting Act in Employment — Employment & Labor Law Encyclopedia