Write a Student Case Brief
Law students read a large volume of cases during law school and use a note-taking system in which cases are written in short, concise "briefs" in order to distinguish cases and recall the pertinent facts of each. A good case brief includes all of the relevant factual information and also details the legal reasoning used by the court in making its decision. A case brief notebook will allow the law student to distinguish between the cases and note times when decisions contradict one another. Briefs can also be useful to see the growth of the law and the various procedural and legal changes along the way.
Instructions
1. Note the facts of the case at the top of the brief. The facts are usually outlined at the beginning of a case and describe all the relevant facts the court used in determining the outcome. Be aware that some new facts omitted in the majority opinion may appear in the dissenting opinion, so read the dissent if there is one before filling out the facts section.
2. Write the procedural posture of the case. Most cases in the casebook will be appellate-level cases, which means they have been through one or more courts before arriving at the court writing the opinion. The procedural posture refers to the courts that the case has been in and the decisions in those courts. Pay particular attention to whether intermediate courts of appeal affirm or reverse trial court rulings.
3. State the holding of the case, which is the ruling that the court makes. Most rulings will be simple affirmations or reversals of the intermediary appellate court or trial court's decision. Some rulings may be more complex and involve partial affirmations and partial reversals.
4. Detail the reasoning the court used to reach its decision. State the rule the court decided to apply, the policy justifications behind the rule and the way in which the court applied the rule to the facts case. If the case you are reading is analogous to another case or was distinguished from another case, be sure to note the various similarities and differences between the cited cases.
5. Explain briefly any concurring or dissenting opinions included with the case. These opinions either disagree with the holding of the majority and seek to apply a wholly different rule (dissenting) or agree with the court's outcome but argue that the rule should have been applied in a different way (concurring). Though the majority decision is the law, the dissenting and concurring opinions can give insight as to the nature of the rule and its broader applications.
6. Note any dicta, which refer to comments made by the court that illustrate the way it would apply the rule to different factual situations. While dicta do not have any binding authority over lower courts, they do give insight into the way the court understands and interprets the rule.
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