Sir James Dyer, (born 1512, Roundhill, Somerset, Eng.—died March 24, 1582, Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire), chief justice of the English Court of Common Pleas from 1559, who originated the modern system of reporting law cases to serve as precedents. His method superseded the recording of cases in yearbooks (begun in 1292), which were not intended as guides for future decisions.
Dyer’s work, comprising three volumes of cases in the King’s (Queen’s) Bench and common pleas court, covers the years 1513–82, practically his whole lifetime, and thus is partly retrospective. His books were written in the Anglo-French then used in the English legal profession and were first translated into English by John Vaillant in 1794. Dyer was knighted in 1552.