Taking the fear out of writing briefs for your classes.
Briefs can be extremely long, boring and confusing or they can be short, sweet and concise. The choice is yours in how you write them… or even if you choose to write one. In law school briefs become imperative to learning as being able to put the case into your own words shows the depth of understanding while writing a brief will force you to commit time to finding the important parts of the case so when your instructor calls on you, you will be able to know what is going on and how to respond quickly. There is nothing worse than being cold called and having to admit you didn’t do the reading or didn’t commit the reading to memory. Oyez.com is an excellent spot to see examples of briefs and to learn about a case quickly.(It is my personal favorite site to look up when I am in question about a case). DO NOT just copy and paste from Oyez to learn cases. It is like reading the Sparknotes version of a book… you might get a good synopsis but you are cheating yourself out of the work and it will show up in your classroom performance and TRUST ME your classmates will know if you read word for word from Oyez. So just don’t.
The parts of a (complete) brief include:
1. Title and Citation
2. Facts of the Case
3. Issues
4. Decisions (Holdings)
5. Reasoning (Rationale)
6. Separate Opinions
7. Analysis
What you want to include is a little up to you, but I am going to break each part down below to show you the importance of including them. First things first, you should never start briefing a case until you have read it at least once from beginning to end.
1. Title and Citation
The most practical answer is … how are you going to know what case you are briefing if you don’t label them and this is how the court system labels court cases so just do it. The title will show you who initiated the legal action, as that name will be listed first. So, in a case like: Brown v. Board of Education you can tell that Brown felt that there had been an injustice done by Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County Kansas. This was a civil case. Including the case citation is important because it shows you how to locate the case later.
2. Facts of the Case
You must include a summary of the facts of the case. It is imperative that you do so and understand the legal points being raised by the case present. You need to include the fact pattern of the case and the nature of the case and all of the relevant evidence occurring. You don’t need the entire chain of events, knowing the entire circumstances of the case is important but you don’t need to brief this – just the facts that are in dispute after a quick summary. You need to include why the case is in front of the court, which revolves around discussing the relevant law, and what is in dispute – or the actions pledged to have been illegal or to have caused damages. The complaint in a civil case, or the indictment in a criminal case.
3. Issues
The best way to state a legal issue is with a one sentence, yes or no question. If you can’t state the issue like this, read through the case carefully again and make sure you have a firm grasp on the question before the court. If you really understand it you will be able to narrow it to a yes or no question. BUT, there might be more than one issue before the court, so read carefully and include all issues. There can be procedure issues, substantive issues, or legal issues all of which could be found within one case and depending on what class you are taking, one of these could be more important than the other. Make sure you have a firm grasp of the topic you are covering in class if you are going to focus on one issue over another.
4. Decisions / Holdings
The fact finders answer to the issue stated before the court. This is the judge or juries answer to the question you asked in part 3. You should be able to answer in a yes or no, or extremely short statement in the language of the court. Keep it short and simple, because the next step will expand.
5. Reasoning
Now is the time to get more in depth about step 4. This is when you lay out the reasons why the judge ruled as they did. The majority opinion becomes the rule of law or the judgment in the case. Bullets or paragraphs work, but I personally like bullet points so I force myself to stay concise, and I can easily find the path the judge took to come to their decision.
6. Separate Opinions
Concurring and dissenting opinions deserve just as much attention, if not more, than the majority opinion in some cases. Give the same depth of thought to step 6 as part 5. (For a list of famous dissenting opinions click here.)
7. Analysis
Write why the case is important in your words. Did it create bold new legal precedent? Overturn old precedent? What impact will it have on litigants, the government or society? What relationship to other cases? What does it show about the court? This is when you can bring your personality to the brief, attack implicit assumptions seen, debate the “rightness” of the decision and logic of reasoning found. Search for “unarticulated premises, logical fallacies, manipulation of the factual record or distortions of precedent” (the wise wisdom from the writers of How to Brief a Case, where a lot the content and concepts here were first found, and how I first learned to write a case brief).
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