The case method: the Practical Reason

Lawyers represent clients, and clients will want to know how laws apply to them. To advise a client, a lawyer needs to understand exactly how an abstract rule of law will apply to the very specific situations a client might encounter.

The case method: the Historical Reason

The legal system inherited from England is largely judge-focused. The judges have made the law what it is through their written opinions. To understand that law, we need to study the actual decisions that the judges have written. Further, we need to learn to look at law the way that judges look at law.

Understand the Reasoning of the Majority Opinion

To understand the reasoning of an opinion, you should first identify the source of the law the judge applied. Some opinions interpret the Constitution while others interpret ‘statutes’, still other cases interpret ‘the common law’, which is a term that usually refers to the body of prior case decisions.

Know the Decision

The ‘decision’ of a case is the action the court took. It is often announced at the very end of the opinion. For example, an appeals court might ‘affirm’ a lower court decision, upholding it, or it might ‘reverse’ the decision, ruling for the other side. Alternatively, an appeals court might ‘vacate’ the lower court decision, wiping the lower-court decision off the books, and send it back to the lower court for further proceedings.

Know the Specific Legal Arguments Made by the Parties

Lawsuits are disputes, and judges only issue opinions when two parties to a dispute disagree on a particular legal question. This means that legal opinions focus on resolving the parties’ very specific disagreement.

What you need to learn from reading a case

Know the Facts

The Law of the Case

After the facts the opinion will then discuss the law. Many opinions present the law in two stages. The first stage discusses the general principles of law that are relevant to cases such as the one the court is deciding. This section might explore the history of a particular field of law or may include a discussion of past cases (known as precedents) that are related to the case the court is deciding. This part of the opinion gives the reader background to help understand the context and significance of the court’s decision.

The Facts of the Case

The first part of the body of the opinion presents the facts of the case.