To find Texas case law in the South Western Reporter, use West’s Texas Digest (Table of Cases Index) to look up cases and the corresponding Supreme Court reporter volumes.
There are three types of indexes to the West’s Texas Digest, 2nd:
1. Table of cases (this is the one we are using for this example)
2. Descriptive word index
3. Words and phrases
We are going to look up the South Western Reporter Second. The abbreviation for this reporter is: S.W. 2d.
Let's look up Sweatt v. Painter (which overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case, Plessy v. Ferguson).
Look at the alphabetical ranges on each volume, and select the right volume.
(In the trial court citation, the first name listed is the plaintiff, the name after versus is the defendant)
Next, look up the case, alphabetically, starting with the plaintiff's last name.
We find Sweatt v Painter in volume 62, page 189 of West's Texas Digest:
There are several entries here for this case, with different pages. Make sure to look for the one you actually want, in this case, South Western Reporter Second (abbreviated: S.W. 2d.).
Next, go to the South Western Reporter section, and look up the volume- notice the volume number ranges. (Find volume 210):
Turn to page 442, and it should be there:
Some volumes of the South Western reporter have these inserts, or annual pocket parts. these are just updates that are sent to us and added after we get the original volume.
