How to brief a case

Read the whole opinion once, separate opinions included, before you write a word. Work out who is suing whom and what each side wants. On the second reading, mark the passages that state the rule, the holding and the steps of the reasoning, and write the page number beside each mark.

1. 1

   Caption and citation

   Write the case name and the full citation: volume, reporter, first page, and the court and year. The court and the year tell you how much the case counts and whether it binds the court you will write for.

   In the book: 14.1 Reading a case citation

2. 2

   Facts

   Only the facts the court relied on: who did what, and what happened as a result. Leave out names, dates and amounts that did not matter to the outcome.

3. 3

   Procedural history

   Who won below, who appealed, and what the court is reviewing: a jury verdict, a dismissal, a grant of summary judgment. The posture tells you what question the court could answer.

4. 4

   Issue

   The legal question the court answered, written as a yes-or-no question that carries the key facts. “Was there jurisdiction?” is too abstract; name the defendant, the service and the forum.

5. 5

   Holding

   The court’s answer to the issue, tied to the facts that mattered. Write down the page where the court states it.

6. 6

   Rule

   The principle the court applied or announced, in the court’s own words where you can, with its page. A rule is what you will quote in a memo, so the page matters.

   In the book: 4.1 Reading a pinpoint: first page, pinpoint and the source’s own locator

7. 7

   Reasoning

   The steps of the court’s argument: the text it read, the cases it followed or distinguished, the policies it weighed. Note the page of each step.

8. 8

   Disposition

   What the court did with the judgment below: affirmed, reversed, vacated or remanded, in whole or in part.

9. 9

   Separate opinions

   Each concurrence and dissent: who wrote it, who joined it, and the point of disagreement. Today’s dissent is sometimes tomorrow’s rule.

   In the book: 14.9 Opinion-type and explanatory parentheticals

10. 10

    Your notes

    Why the case is in the casebook, how it fits with the cases around it, and the questions you expect in class.

A pinpoint is the page, or the numbered paragraph, where a passage appears. Every memo and brief you write will need one for each rule and each quotation you rely on, and finding a page again later takes far longer than writing it down now. Use the page printed in the reporter, not the page counter of your PDF viewer.

Many briefing guides leave pinpoints out. Every brief in this library gives them: for the holding, for the rule and for every key quote.

In the book: 4.1 Reading a pinpoint: first page, pinpoint and the source’s own locator

The caption and the pinpoints in your brief are most of a citation already. Here is one case written the three ways a memo uses it: in full the first time, with a pinpoint when you rely on one passage, and in short form after that.

In the book: 14.3 The court-and-year parenthetical; 14.13 Short forms

See the full brief of Pennoyer v. Neff

• Briefing from a headnote or a summary. Headnotes are written by publishers, not by the court, and they are not the law.
• Writing an issue so abstract that it would fit any case on the topic.
• Stating the holding without the facts that produced it, which makes the case look broader than it is.
• Treating every sentence of the opinion as the rule. Remarks the court did not need to decide the case are dicta: useful, but weaker.
• Leaving out the page numbers, then hunting for them the night before the memo is due.

A brief records what one court did. A memo or an exam answer uses the case to analyze new facts, and that is where IRAC and CREAC come in. IRAC and CREAC, and where the citations go