The Office of the North Carolina Appellate Reporter publishes the opinions of the Supreme Court of North Carolina and Court of Appeals. The office was established in 1819 and Appellate Reporters are appointed by the Supreme Court under the authority of N.C.G.S. § 7A-6.

Opinions are published in three forms:

Slip opinions — Opinions are first published online on filing day as slip opinions. They may be withdrawn or corrected until the mandate issues 20 days later. After the mandate has issued, only changes to correct typographical or grammatical errors are made. The slip opinion should be cited until the opinion is published in an Advance Sheet and receives a Reports citation.

Advance Sheets — Slip opinions are then printed with headnotes and other finding aids in soft-bound books called Advance Sheets and online at this site. All changes that have been made to the slip opinions are included. When the opinions are published in soft-bound books, they are given citations to the official North Carolina Reports and these citations replace the slip opinion citations.

Print Volumes — Advance sheets are then compiled and printed in the hard-bound volumes of the North Carolina Reports, for the Supreme Court, and the North Carolina Court of Appeals Reports, for the Court of Appeals. The Reports also include various rules, ceremonial matters, and other appendices as the Supreme Court directs, and lists of judges and other officials. PDF versions of the bound volumes appear online and are intended to be exact replicas.

Note: If there is a conflict between the print and the digital version of an opinion, the print version controls.

Search Case Summaries / Headnotes

Search headnotes of legal topics in opinions of the Supreme Court (since December 2014) and the Court of Appeals (since April 2016).