CaseRead

READING A CASE

The purpose of reading a court opinion is to understand the holding of the case. That provides the substantive meaning of the case. A bundle of holdings from a set of cases that relate to the same topic or set of questions will yield a rule of law and some set of precedent for future actors. A single case does NOT produce a very useful “rule of law,” although sometimes a single case, particularly in connection with Constitutional Law will produce the only guidance on a subject that is available for actors. Understanding the holding of a case is essential for the student to master the substantive development of constitutional doctrine. That requires students to analyze cases carefully and soundly. The holding is sometimes apparent and self-evident from the way the court opinion is written, but in other circumstances it is buried in wordy logic and extraneous material particularly in older, 19th century cases. This says nothing of holdings that might be “buried in the footnotes.” In some cases several issues or legal questions may be presented, each with a separate holding that needs to be parsed from a careful reading. In other instances, a case with several questions may contain only one holding if the courts decided to ignore one or more of the questions. It is important to note that the holding in a case should be stated as narrowly as possible and it must derive from the question(s) posed for decision by the litigants and the facts of the case. Everything that the court opinion contains IS NOT the holding, and a good deal of the logic or reasoning presented by the Court in the opinion is obiter dictum (a digression or a discussion of side or unrelated points). Analytic skill helps to sort out the narrow holding in the case and to separate it from the dicta.
     The holding can be stated in very general and broad language, or it can be narrowed down to the very specific facts in the case. It is important for students to recognize that the best, initial approach to developing their skills in this regard is to develop the ability to state holdings just as narrowly as possible. This is counter-intuitive because we usually “paint with the broadest possible brush.” However, students should be very careful about the statement of the holding in a case, and while students will become facile in developing the holdings, they should never forget that a holding can be manipulated and modified to fit the needs of a particular party. The “safest” approach to developing and using the holding of any case is a narrow holding. Such skill is a very important first step in the development of the analytic abilities that students must develop.
     The initial step in developing the holding is to determine what question(s) the Supreme Court treats or addresses in the court opinion. Your first reading of the case should be to discover what the question(s) in the case is(are). You should phrase the question(s) so that the answer(s) can be developed in simple yes/no terms. Thus, look for the question(s), then phrase that in terms of yes/no answer(s) to the question(s), so that you can develop the holding in the case.
     The questions in a case arise out of the facts in the case. Each case is really a story involving people, actions, statutes or other laws, and problems that arise as a result of these things. It is essential to read cases looking carefully for the facts or the story as the basis or the grounding in which the case arises. While you will seldom be called on to recite the story or the facts in a case in class, you must know those since they are the context from which the legal questions emerge. The wording of the statute in question, the events and sequence of those acts, along with the damages or impact of those events, and “who said what to whom” are important to your understanding of the case and the holding. Before you brief a case you must know the relevant facts of the case well. Pay particular and close attention to the facts in each case you read.
     This sequence of holding, question(s), and facts is backwards. The end objective of your reading of an opinion is the holding. Thus, what you need to do when you read a court opinion is to develop an understanding of the (1) facts, then formulate the (2) question(s) in the case, and finally develop the (3) holding. So while the preceding discussion is backwards, it still focuses on the end objective or result - the holding in the case and the development of constitutional doctrine.
     Cases presented in casebooks have been edited and shortened by the editor (O'Brien) in order to provide the students with the narrowest and most central features of the Court’s decision and holding FROM THE AUTHOR”S PERSPECTIVE. That is not always suitable for the class discussion. O’Brien provides some of the facts in an introductory paragraph that is written by the case editor. Then the excerpted case presents the Court’s reasoning, designed to justify its holding in the case. Developing the skills to read and understand a court opinion requires close attention to detail, quick and accurate verbatim reading, and careful phrasing of questions, issues, and the holding.   So take the editor’s cuttings with a grain of slat, and students should expect to consult the full opinion in many of the cases that O’Brien has excerpted.

You are strongly encouraged to consult the full Court opinion in any case. If you have the legal citation to the case (these are supplied by the Casebook editor, and the editor has usually supplied the correct citation), you can examine the original, full opinion by consulting the Lawyer’s Edition of the Supreme Court Reports in the Reference Section of the HSSE Library in STEWART CENTER. Students are encouraged to do that at various times in order to “see” what full opinions look like, and to gain additional information about a specific case. You can also use Lexis-Nexis to find and read the full opinion in a case, or print out your own copy of that.

In addition to consulting the original documents in Supreme Court cases, students may also be asked to read the original wording of relevant statutes. These can also be found in the Reference Section of the HSSE Library or on-line. You will have to know the citation to the U.S.C. or the United States Code. Otherwise you will have to be able to use the index to the Code to find the relevant portions of the statute. Lexis-Nexis has the capability to provide full text of statutes also.

An adjacent point of major importance is the ability to cite court opinions correctly. Both the proper citation for and hints about briefing cases are explained in O'Brien at 1037-38. Students are expected to be able to cite Supreme Court (and lower court) opinions as well as other legal materials such as statutes correctly. The Official manual for legal citations is called “the Blue Book” and it is on Reserve in the Undergraduate Library. The “Maroon Book,” attached to this website is an adequate substitute for the Bluebook and may be somewhat more manageable.

A valuable way of developing analytic skills is to brief cases. A BRIEF is much different from writing the holding. It is much more extensive and developed. O’Brien indicates something about briefing on pp. 1035-37. Briefing is time-consuming, but students will become efficient at it through practice. Student should be able to answer the following questions about each case when they have finished briefing it:

1. What are the facts in this case? (This includes the precise wording of the Constitutional or statutory provisions involved in the case.)
2. What issue(s) or question(s) is(are) raised by these facts for the Court to decide?
3. What answer(s) did the Court give to the issue(s) or question(s)?
4. What reasoning did the Court provide to justify or support its answer(s)?
5. What countervailing or dissenting arguments could be or were made by members of the Court for different conclusions (i.e., answers) or different justifications for the answers arrived at?
6. [What hypothetical or “next questions” does this case leave for decision?]

The experience of writing briefs out is invaluable. Students will be surprised at how good they get at stating facts, questions, holdings, and reasoning if they write those out, and they can always refer to these written briefs in class if they are called on to answer questions about the case. Thus, written briefs make very good study notes which focus preparation, and contain annotations and additional material after the class discussion is finished.

[It has been said that after you read and brief 10,000 cases you get pretty good at it. While that may be an exaggeration, the only way to develop such clear thinking is to read and brief a great many cases.]

Students should develop their briefs of cases with the points enumerated above. That way they will be prepared to discuss a case in terms of these questions. Certainly their written briefs should contain these components in concise clear, understandable (useable) form. If that is done, then hypothetical questions or different factual assumptions (#6 above) can be discussed and the case used as precedent to develop answers to these potential questions in class.
This kind of analysis of each case will also permit the student to understand the development of doctrine over time. The subtle variations in holdings, reasoning, and facts that emerge from reading cases this way facilitate discussions of trends in doctrinal development. This also permits students to “see” how court reasoning evolves or changes from case to case or over time as circumstances and questions change. Thus, the textual analysis that emerges from this analytic effort (briefing) is central to the understanding of the Supreme Court as a political and a legal institution. It is also essential to comprehending the development of constitutional doctrine and precedent. This point should be clear that cases can contain subtle and small differences. The nuances from one case to the next, from the reasoning on one point of law to the next (within a single opinion) needs to be grasped and remembered.

Students should note that a brief contains several different types of writing. The facts are descriptive summaries of the events, actors, and issues that arose in the case. This paragraph of each brief should be tight and succinct but complete. If a statutory provision is involved in the case, the crucial portions of the statute should be QUOTED in the factual segment of the brief. There will be times during class discussion when factual questions about the case will be essential to the rest of the discussion of the case. Students must develop the skill to gather the facts in the case and have those readily available during class discussions throughout the semester.

The legal questions posed in the case require students to write tight and focused questions that capture the essential issue(s) raised in the case. This question-drafting task is much more important than most students expect, but it is clear that the members of the Court will pay some attention to the way legal questions are formulated (by litigants and by each other) and either answer those questions or re-formulate the question in a way that yields the result the majority of the Justices want to address. This is an important feature of writing. Students should not expect that question formulation requires complex and convoluted wording. Simple, direct, and coherent questions that can be answered dichotomously, “yes” or “no” are likely to serve as the best vehicles for understanding the case, developing narrow holdings, and driving class discussion.

The last, important feature of the brief, involves the legal reasoning and analysis of the case. This requires students to be able to follow the reasoning the Court provides in the opinion to justify its decision in a case. This is generally straightforward, although some justices do not write particularly clearly or directly, and they sometimes mix several forms of legal reasoning in their opinions. The Supplemental material that students are to read first provides some direction to this part of the task of preparing briefs, and students will be expected to use that framework throughout the semester. However, there is no substitute for close reading of opinions and remembering and following the logic that is presented in those opinions. Most opinion writers (judges) will respond to or counter (and dismiss) the arguments of the losing side in a case. That means that reading the opinion will provide insight into what both “sides” in the case argued before the court, and what the writer’s response to those arguments is. This is important for students to grasp so that they can develop a rigorous ability present their own logical arguments, respond to counter-arguments that others might make, and present the best and most convincing arguments for a proposition that are possible. This requires careful reading and thinking. Then it requires honed skills at formulating and writing logical arguments.

A well-prepared brief is essential for developing these intellectual skills, and building a set of “notes” for the course.

N.B. The Maroon Book (or the more complicated “Blue Book”) citation form is required for this course. The fundamental difference between the two is that the Blue Book is much more detailed and esoteric than the Maroon Book. The essential information is the same under both systems of citation. The Blue Book is on Reserve, and the Maroon Book is linked to this course website.