English law reports between 1550 and 1650 seem far more accessible today than the “year books” that preceded them. This is not because they were produced differently, for a different readership or by a different kind of reporter, but because the legal system itself had changed. We also encounter in the Tudor period the first reports written by eminent lawyers, two of whom (Plowden and Coke) saw a selection of them through the press in their lifetimes. Recent editorial work on the better reports has revealed something of the way they were compiled, and also of what was omitted when contemporary notes were turned into printed volumes.

Coke's reports are the most famous, traditionally cited simply as The Reports. Work has just begun on an edition of the underlying notebooks (first discovered just forty years ago), which will probably require at least six volumes. Coke's reporting style was controversial, and his alleged subjectivity was seized upon by Francis Bacon as one of the grounds for bringing him down in 1616. However, Bacon's scheme of 1617 to engage professional reporters, paid by the crown, seems to have collapsed after a few years. Law reporting was thus to remain a matter of private initiative until the end of the eighteenth century, and many of the best reports – even those written by judges – have still not been published. Anyone seeking to trace the evolution of a legal doctrine or practice before about 1700 must regard manuscript reports as an essential recourse.

This article attempts to reveal how a typical first generation Chinese American activist set out to go to law school to learn the skill set to help fight against racial prejudice directed at the Chinese in the early twentieth century. It examines how Hua Chuen Mei, a first-generation Chinese American lawyer was educated and trained in America; it primarily traces his undergraduate and law school education at Columbia and New York University Law School from 1910–1914 to show how he overcame the odds and excelled academically to complete his undergraduate and law degree programs with flying colors. It revisits his extracurricular activities to understand what motivated early Chinese immigrants like him to seek legal education, and what issues were uppermost in the mind of a typical Chinese American law student in that era.

After the Supreme People's Court of China (the “Supreme Court”) issued the Provisions of the Supreme People's Court Concerning Work on Guiding Cases (the “Provisions”), which symbolized the establishment of China's guiding cases system, it attracted worldwide attention. Some institutes, like Stanford, launched programs on China's Guiding Cases. It is of importance to discuss the potential and possibility of establishing China's guiding cases system by promoting the Guiding Cases in the context of ongoing judicial reform. For international practitioners, it is helpful to know the civil jurisdiction where there is case law available as case guidance. Also, China judicial reform has become a keen topic for discussion in U.S.–China relations. “The efficiency and fairness in handling commercial cases and the use of Guiding Cases in the adjudication of commercial [cases]” was one of the key topics discussed during the first dialogue joined by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Commerce.

This study grew out of my on-the-job blogging. At both the Charleston School of Law and the J. Rueben Clark Law School, I read every opinion from the state and federal appellate courts with jurisdiction over South Carolina and Utah respectively, summarizing the binding authority and posting those summaries online at the Barrister blog and the Binding the Law blog. This has served as excellent current awareness and bar preparation service to the law school communities and a research tool to the legal community generally.