Chapter 1 answers

Volume: 347. Reporter: U.S. First page: 483. Pinpoint: 495. Decision year: 1954. If the sentence relies on another page of this same opinion, inspect that passage and change the pinpoint; keep the identifying volume, reporter, first page, and year.

The citation contains an address for the decision and an address within it. The first page belongs to the decision's publication identity. The pinpoint belongs to the particular proposition being supported. One opinion can therefore have many correct citations with different pinpoints without becoming a different authority.

Do not move the new supporting page into the first-page position. That would make the full citation identify the decision as beginning at a place where it does not begin. Do not keep 495 merely because it was correct for an earlier sentence.

Label the two page fields decision begins and support appears. Your revised full citation should retain 483 in the first field and contain the newly inspected location in the second.

Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).

The defective version preserved the supporting page but lost the opinion's first page. The repair restores 483 before the comma and retains 495 after it. Volume 347, reporter U.S., and the 1954 decision year already identify the correct publication and time. The task asks for a full citation, so the reader should not have to infer the missing starting page from an earlier reference.

Simply replacing 495 with 483 would solve one problem while creating another: it would remove the locator for the supplied conclusion. Nor is 347 U.S. at 495 a complete first citation; the at form presupposes an adequately introduced source.

Read the numbers aloud by function: volume 347; first page 483; supporting page 495. Then check that the case name alone is italicized and the citation ends with a period.

Use reporter page 495 in the model citation. Preserve PDF image 13 → reporter 495 in your working notes if that mapping helps you reopen the file.

A file counter counts sheets in one electronic object. It may include a cover, a syllabus, or other material before the opinion. Reporter pagination supplies the stable publication address used by 347 U.S. 483. A reader opening another faithful copy should be able to find 495 even if that copy counts file pages differently.

If the PDF contains no reporter markers, do not infer them by subtracting a guessed number of introductory pages. Inspect a reliably paginated copy, or verify an appropriate alternative source form and its actual locator. Do not quietly pass a temporary viewer coordinate into the final citation.

Find the printed or preserved 495 marker beside the supplied passage. If you cannot, mark that reporter pinpoint unchecked rather than marking the citation complete.

In its discussion of public education, the Court stated, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).

The introductory phrase preserves the supplied context, the quotation reproduces the six words, and the full citation identifies the historical opinion and passage. No signal is needed because the source directly supplies the quoted words. The quotation is short enough to remain within the sentence rather than becoming a block.

Do not change educational facilities to all facilities or add words inside the quotation that the source does not supply. A parenthetical cannot repair a quotation silently altered to announce a broader constitutional proposition. The sentence-ending punctuation does not authorize changing the wording.

Count the quoted words, compare them with the supplied sentence, and locate 495. Check that public education remains the setting and that the citation retains 483 as its first page.

A sentence beginning 'The Brown opinion concludes' is also suitable if it preserves the same quotation, historical attribution, and public-education context.

No. A supported revision is: “The Court concluded that separate educational facilities in public education are inherently unequal. Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954).”

The draft expands both the subject and the legal basis. The supplied passage addresses educational facilities in its public-education discussion. It does not announce that every separate facility violates every constitutional provision. This is a scope error: the assertion reaches beyond what the identified passage establishes.

Changing holds to suggests would leave the two universal claims unsupported. Adding See likewise cannot make the pinpoint cover every setting and constitutional provision. Fix the sentence before deciding whether a different signal or characterization is needed.

Underline every, separate facility, and every constitutional provision in the defective sentence. The revision should replace those universal claims with the particular historical conclusion actually supplied. The citation still points to 495 because that remains the relevant passage.

Retain (1954) in the ordinary case citation. Put the 2026 download date in the source card's retrieval field, together with the URL and the copy inspected.

The decision year tells the reader when this judicial decision occurred. Retrieval tells another researcher when a particular electronic copy was obtained. The two dates describe different events. Downloading an older opinion does not create a new decision, and a later website update does not ordinarily change the decision year.

Do not erase the retrieval information just because it does not belong in this parenthetical. It can help explain which online version was checked and support a later comparison. Equally, do not combine 1954 and 2026 into a two-year parenthetical without a source-specific reason.

Your source card should show two separately labeled dates. Your Brown citation should end (1954), and its source record should explain the later access without presenting that access as a judicial event.

Italicize Brown v. Bd. of Educ. including v. Keep the following comma, 347 U.S., 483, 495, (1954), and the citation's final period in roman type.

The name is the italic unit; the surrounding publication fields and sentence punctuation have their own roles. The period completing Educ. stays with that abbreviated word inside the italicized name. The comma separating the name from the volume sits outside it. The final period ends the whole citation sentence after the year parenthetical.

Selecting the entire citation and pressing italic would wrongly change the reporter and dates. Selecting the name plus its separating comma would produce a smaller but still distinct error. The ordinary final period here differs from the period within the italic abbreviation Id.

Inspect the boundary after Educ.: an italic abbreviation period, then a roman comma. Inspect the other end separately: a roman closing parenthesis and final period. The numbers should remain readable in roman type.

The Court rejected the government's reliance on a reporter's headnote as an accurate statement of an earlier decision. United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 336-37 (1906). The discussion at 337 also acknowledges a different statutory arrangement in some states.

Pages 336-37 show why the distinction matters in an actual argument: the government invoked the headnote, and the Court identified both its nonjudicial authorship and its inaccurate scope. A summary may locate useful material while still misstating what the opinion establishes. Read the court's own passage before attributing the summary's proposition to it.

Do not turn the lesson into the unsupported universal claim that every court's syllabus or summary has identical legal status. This passage expressly preserves a state-law qualification. Nor should the government's quoted argument be mistaken for the Court's response.

Your answer should identify the speaker of the headnote, the Court's correction, the 336-37 pinpoint, and the qualification. A bare statement 'headnotes are bad' misses the research decision.

A usable card records: identity—Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954), Supreme Court of the United States; opinion—the Court's opinion; location—495; access—the supplied CourtListener URL; proposition—the public-education conclusion and six-word quotation; version/retrieval—the particular electronic copy and actual date inspected; limit—historical passage check, without a commercial-citator or comprehensive subsequent-treatment check.

The fields separate finding a decision, finding its passage, and evaluating the sentence. Preserve the actual URL and the context beside the quotation. If the exercise is completed solely from the supplied packet, say that rather than inventing a new independent retrieval.

A pasted full citation alone is not a complete source card. It lacks the proposed sentence, inspected context, copy information, and scope limit. Conversely, recording only the URL would omit the stable reporter address.

A second reader should be able to recover the opinion, locate 495, state what was checked, and see what remains outside the check without asking what your shorthand means.