The name of the party bringing the lawsuit always appears first in legal documents at each level of the court scale. For example, Arlo Tatum and others filed a lawsuit in federal district court seeking an injunction against Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and others to prevent the military from spying on them. Tatum and his friends became plaintiffs and the case became known as Tatum v. Laird. The Tatum group lost in the District Court and appealed to the Court of Appeals, where they were named as appellants, and the defendants became appellants. Thus, the case was still known in Tatum v. Laird. So there you have it. You will notice that in the example above, the outline of the dissenting opinion was slightly longer. This is because Palsgraf implies such strong disagreement and reasoning between majority and dissent. Other than that, the example above is a fairly standard case brief. You should now feel ready to tackle your own case description! To write a case description for law school: Excerpt from Introduction to the Study of Law: Cases and Materials, Now that we`ve covered the basics of reading, commenting, highlighting, and briefing a case, you can start practicing. Keep in mind the tips and techniques mentioned in this chapter as you discuss the four topics covered in the rest of this book.
If you are experiencing difficulties, refer to this chapter to help you master the case study method and the art of applying the common law. (2) Procedural history (what events in the judicial system led to this case) In the previous section, the parts of a case have been described to make it easier to read and identify the relevant information you will use to prepare your pleadings. This section describes the parts of a briefing to give you an idea of what a briefing is, what is useful to include in a briefing, and what it is for. Case descriptions are a necessary study tool for law school that helps capture and analyze the mountainous mass of material that law students must digest. The case description represents a final product after a case has been read, proofread, disassembled, and reassembled. In addition to its function as a self-learning and SEO tool, the case description also provides a valuable “cheat sheet” for attending classes. Here, the student should assess the importance of the case, its relationship to other cases, its place in history and what is shown about the court, its members, its decision-making processes or the impact on litigants, government or society. Here, the assumptions and implied values of the judges should be examined, the “merits” of the decision discussed, and the logic of the reasoning should be taken into account. What facts are relevant to include in an information session? You need to state the facts necessary to remember the story. If you forget the story, you won`t remember how the law was enforced in this case.
You must also state the facts that are decisive for the decision in the case. For example, if the fact that a car is white is a deciding factor in the case, the pleading should indicate that it is a white car and not just a car. To the extent that procedural history helps you remember the case or plays an important role in the bottom line, you should also include these facts. a) Facts (name of the case and its parts, factual and procedural records and judgment) If you include only these four elements, you should have everything you need to effectively retrieve the case information during the course or a few months later while you are studying for the exams. Briefly summarize the relevant facts. The keyword here is relevant. An expert opinion often contains several extraneous facts that are not directly relevant to the Court`s analysis. Feel free to add irrelevant facts if they are necessary to understand what happened, but don`t get too carried away. For example, if a tort case involves a car accident, don`t get attached to the color or make and model of the car, unless the court makes it clear that these facts are relevant in some way. On the other hand, you may want to provide information, for example, about the fact that a driver has been distracted or tried to avoid an obstacle on the road. In other words, focus on the legally significant facts. If you struggle with this, don`t worry! They will improve over time! The term “legal memory” is often confusing.
There are at least two different meanings in which the term is used. Get advice from law students and lawyers in the LexTalk law community on law school Remember: when you read so many cases in each course, your case descriptions will help you remember the details of each case for class discussions and exam preparation. While an information session is an extremely useful and important learning aid, annotations and highlights are other tools for breaking down the mass of material in your case book. Later in this section, these different techniques will be discussed and shown how they complement and improve the information process. 5. Specify the questions in question. You are now ready to describe your opinion. In this section of the pleadings, indicate the questions of fact and law to be decided by the court.
To properly analyze a case, you need to break it down into its components. Do not write the dossier until you have read it at least once. Do not think that because you found the judge`s best purple prose, you necessarily extracted the essence of the decision. Look for inarticulate premises, logical errors, manipulation of the factual record, or distortions of precedents. Then ask yourself: How does this case relate to other cases in the same general area of law? What does that say about justice policy? Does the result violate your sense of justice or fairness? What better way to decide? The government (state or federal) prosecutes defendants in criminal cases in the courts of first instance. 7. Describe the court`s reasoning for each intervention. You must now describe the court`s reasoning for each intervention. This section of the case description may be the most important, as you need to understand the court`s reasoning in order to analyze it and apply it to other facts, such as the interrogation. Start with the first point, describe each link in the court`s reasoning. The decision is the answer given by the court to a question submitted to it for an answer by the parties concerned or asked by the court itself in its own reading of the case.