Federal Supplement

Federal Supplement®

A set of legal reference books containing decisions of federal courts in chronological order.

The first volume of the Federal Supplement was published in 1933, and successive volumes have been numbered consecutively. Volume 900 was published in 1994. A citation to an opinion printed in the Federal Supplement gives, first, the volume and then the page number on which the case begins. For example, 465 F.Supp. 1286 means that the case can be found in volume 465 on page 1286.

The Federal Supplement was created as a reporter of trial-level decisions by federal district courts. It contains the decisions of U.S. district courts from 1932 to the present, decisions of the former U.S. Court of Claims between 1932 and 1960, and the decisions of the U.S. Customs Court from 1949 to 1980. The U.S. Customs Court was renamed the U.S. Court of International Trade in 1980, and its decisions will now be carried under its new designation. In 1969, it started carrying rulings of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Decisions of the U.S. Courts of Appeals and of the former U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and certain other federal courts are printed in the Federal Reporter.