Supreme Court Minute books, 1859-1987.

These minute books contain the documentation of daily proceedings of the Utah Supreme Court but are not transcripts of court cases. The abstracts recorded in these books document the variety of court matters the Utah Supreme Court has been engaged in over time. The main duty of the court was to hear and make decisions on lower court proceedings as they were appealed to the higher court. Most of the entries in these volumes reflect that emphasis as the majority document decisions rendered on various civil, criminal, or probate cases from across the state. Its not uncommon to also find entries related to the naturalization process in some of the earlier volumes. Information in these record books was recorded by the clerk of the court and typically consists of the names of appellants and respondents, the names of attorneys and representatives making oral argument before the court, the names and signatures of justices rendering opinions on cases, and in later volumes a case file numberassigned on an individual case basis. These records are a useful resource in tracing not only changes in the structure and jurisdiction of the Utah Supreme Court, but in a broader sense larger changes in society based on the types of court cases appearing before the Utah Supreme Court.