All Editions of all Reporters Need Dates

[mlissner]

The date fields for the reporters are used extensively by the citation checker, and we should try to research and complete them if we can.

The way these are used is as follows. Say we find the following citation in a block of text somewhere:

Foo v. Bar, 22 Hill 44 (1834)

We can make some assumptions:

1. The volume is 22.
2. The page is 44.
3. The reporter is abbreviated as "Hill".
4. The year is 1834.
5. Foo and Bar are probably enemies.

Unfortunately, though, "Hill" can refer to two different reporters, so one thing we can't know immediately is whether "Hill" refers to "Hill's New York Reports" or "South Carolina Reports, Hill". To figure that out, we have to look at the years of the reporters, where we see that Hill's South Carolina Reports was the only one that existed in 1834. Boom! We now know which reporter this refers to. From there, we can figure out the jurisdiction (South Carolina), and using all of this knowledge, we can figure out exactly which case in CourtListener this refers to.

This whole process is only possible because somehow we have accurate dates for the "Hill" reporters, and there are other benefits too. We don't have these dates for most reporters though, and we should collect them if we can.

[mlissner]

So, the folks at Harvard have quietly published their own database of reporters: https://github.com/harvard-lil/reporter-list/blob/master/reporters.json, including dates! Reconciling them will be the next piece of the puzzle.