The Federalist Papers
The high demand for the essays led to their publication in a more permanent form. On January 1, 1788, the New York publishing firm J. & A. McLean announced that they would publish the first thirty-six essays as a bound volume; that volume was released on March 22, 1788, and was titled "The Federalist" Volume 1. New essays continued to appear in the newspapers; Federalist No. 77 was the last number to appear first in that form, on April 2. A second bound volume containing "Federalist" 37–77 and the yet to be published "Federalist" 78–85 was released on May 28. The last eight papers ("Federalist" 78–85) were republished in the New York newspapers between June 14 and August 16, 1788.
Federal Cases
In 1880, West Publishing Company began reporting decisions from all federal courts in the "Federal Reporter", and the "Federal Reporter" soon became established as the leading unofficial reporter for the federal circuit and district courts. But federal decisions issued prior to 1880 had been previously published in a variety of separate reporters from several private entrepreneurs. "Federal Cases", then, was West Publishing's attempt to collect and republish all federal decisions from 1789 to 1880 in a single reporter which would be part of its National Reporter System, just like the "Federal Reporter". That is, as with other NRS reporters, the cases included were annotated by West attorney-editors with "headnotes" summarizing their holdings, and the headnotes were then indexed for easy cross-referencing to similar cases through the West American Digest System. Republishing all those old cases within the NRS framework meant that subsequent generations of lawyers and judges would be able to resort solely to West reporters to access the entire extant universe of post-1789 federal case law.