Hi, let's talk about writing the student case brief. First, why do we write them?
Our legal system uses the principle of precedent, whereby judges use the logic
of past cases to help decide current cases.
To persuade judges, attorneys review published decisions in past cases and then analogize to similarities and
distinguish differences between them and the case currently being considered
by the judge. In your student case brief, you will engage in the first part of this
mental exercise - reading published decisions, analyzing them, and breaking
them down into standardized components, so that they can be applied to new situations.
This will allow the reader of your case brief to quickly gain an understanding
of the case you're summarizing, and that's important. But what's more
important is the process that you will undergo, as you learn to separate
relevant and irrelevant information, recognize how to use these standardized
components, and summarize your case in one page. You will learn to recognize precedent.
So, how do you do it?
First, you need to identify your brief. Include your name and your class, and the
citation of your case. Now, important cases are published in hardcover books
that look like this. This is a case reporter, and your citation will allow
someone who's looking for your case to find it in a law library that's filled
with case reporters like this. Citations are simple; they identify the parties to
the case, the volume of the case reporter, the name of the case reporter
(abbreviated), the page on which your case starts in the book, and the year it was decided.
Next, in about a paragraph, you will be asked to summarize the legally relevant
facts of your case. Now, legally relevant facts in this context are those which
had an impact on the publishing court's decision. Remember that, while many
important cases end up at the Supreme Court, they didn't start there.
They started in a trial court and worked their way up, and the legally
relevant facts at the trial court may well be different from those at the
publishing court. So let's take Miranda v. Arizona for example. At the trial
court, the judge would have been primarily interested in facts which
tended to show that Miranda was guilty or not guilty of the offense with which
he was charged. On the other hand, at the publishing court - the US Supreme Court
in this case - the court would have been more interested in facts surrounding how
his statement was taken and what he knew of his rights. This was the issue (or
these were the issues) that the defense brought to the US Supreme Court for
consideration. And that takes us to the next standardized component of your case brief.
The issue is the question posed to the publishing court. State it as a question,
starting with "whether," or some form of the word "do": typically did, do, does.
When you phrase your issue, do it specifically but without using names, so that it
can be applied to other fact situations. So for example, in Miranda, you might phrase
your issue something like "Whether police must advise a suspect in custody of his
or her Fifth and Sixth amendment rights before interrogation?"
The holding is the publishing court's answer to the question posed to it - its answer to the
issue. And the holding can actually be quite simple, depending on how you
phrased your issue. It might even be a simple yes or no.
The rationale asks why the publishing court ruled as it did. And when you read
your published case, you'll see that the publishing court goes into great detail
about why the decision was made in the way that it was. So what you'll be doing
here is summarizing the rationale, the logic, the "why" of the decision. And this -
as you, I'm sure can understand - is particularly helpful for people reading
your brief who want to apply it to other situations, to see if that logic still applies.
The rule is the most important part of your case brief. What rule did
your case produce or develop to be applied to other cases as precedent?
This is why we read and brief these particular cases, out of the thousands of
cases that are decided and published every year.
The impact is the only part of the brief where you will be asked to go outside of your case and to think
about what's going on in society as a result of what happened in your case.
Now obviously, that can't be included within your case because it hasn't happened yet, right?
So what we're looking for in the impact is what changed? After your case,
how did society change? What impact did it make?
The Your Views section of your brief is your chance to engage in some critical thinking and to offer your
opinions. Remember that our Supreme Court justices are really just...lawyers.
They're judges. They're people. And you might agree or you might disagree with
their decisions, with their rationale, with the rules that they impose, with the
impact that their cases produce. This is your chance to state your opinion and why you feel that way.
I hope that this has helped you to understand why and how we write case briefs.
At this point, I'm going to turn this project over to you
to read your case carefully, analyze it, and break it down into its standardized
components so that the logic and rule of your case can be applied to other fact
situations as precedent.
I'll leave you with that and simply say that I look forward to reading your work.