Chapter 1: How to Read a Case
In this chapter, I learned how to read complicated cases and analyze their logic effectively through the following things.
- Where cases come from: the cases in a casebook come from the real decisions of a court which consist of the American common law.
- Civil and criminal cases: civil actions deal with all cases that are not criminal cases and each one is applied by different rules of procedure.
- Federal and state court systems: Federal courts are divided to district courts, circuit courts and the Supreme Court. District courts are federal trial courts hearing both civil and criminal cases, while circuit courts are federal courts of appeal. The United States Supreme Court is the highest court which has the discretion to hear appeals from lower courts on all questions related to federal law and the Constitution. Most state courts also have a legal system similar to the federal court. Specifically, they consist of trial courts, appeal courts and state supreme courts. However, there is a difference between federal courts and state trial courts in that the latter has separate systems for civil and criminal cases. Besides, decisions of a state supreme court related to state law issues cannot be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
- The Concept of Precedent: A court’s initial decision continually affects subsequent cases except that the court reverses itself or the decision is reversed or vacated by a higher court. The federal Supreme Court’s decisions are binding on all courts, while the state supreme court influences all courts in the state.
- Opinions: Majority, Dissenting, Concurring, and Plurality: the majority’s decision is the majority opinion which becomes precedent. A dissenting opinion is the opinion of the judge who made a disagreement with the majority and has no precedential value. A concurring opinion is the opinion of the judge who agrees with the majority opinion but is not the reasoning. A plurality opinion is an opinion that received the greatest number of votes of any of the opinions filed.
- Procedural History: procedural history helps understand how a case traveled to produce the court’s opinion.
- Case Citations: the citations containing numbers, an abbreviation, and a date show the court of the opinion, the date of the decision, and the source in the case reporters.
- Cases and the Socratic Method: the role cases play in the Socratic Method helps us improve our analytic ability when we read difficult cases.
- Deciding How to Read Your Casebooks: this chapter provides some guidelines to read cases effectively. It would be better to read cases from beginning to end with our own speed and to visualize the dispute and parties. In addition, using highlighters should be cautious.
Chapter 2: How to Brief a Case
Briefing a case helps us how to read cases, break them down into essential elements, outline the classes, and study for exams by the Socratic Method. The case of Delair v. McAdoo is provided as an example to explain how to brief a case.
First, synthesizing the reading is necessary to figure out a general idea of the case and the procedural history. Next, a case brief should be organized for the following four essential elements of every case.
- Facts: we should summarize the facts written in the case in our own words and include our observations on the case.
- Issue: when issue spotting is not able to be spotted clearly in a case, we can define and phrase the issue simply.
- Reasoning: reasoning for courts to decide the proper resolution consists of two sources: (1) the rules from the precedent, and (2) social policy arguments from cases.
- Holding: the holding is the court’s conclusion in the case, leading to the binding precedent. It is also to be described under the balance between breadth and specificity.
Through this chapter, I learned the way to brief a case and the importance of it. It was very helpful to figure out the essential elements of a case with an actual tors case. I believe that I can improve my skills to brief a case with more by more practice.
Chapter 3: Learning from Socratic Class Discussion
Socratic discussion that is used in law school classes makes students to think through the problems and discover the answer on their own. Differently from college classes, questions by the teaching method lead to questions instead of answers. In this regard, students can face the following problems in the classes with Socratic discussion.
- Taking notes: we should try to take the best quality notes by making the notes organized and consistent because it is not possible to write down everything in the class. The notes also should be written down according to importance. They can include our questions and the professors’ lectures.
- When a classmate gets called on: we should decide to write down the classmate’s ideas or thoughts.
- When you get called on: the thing is how well we can adjust our reasoning to different situations and defend our position. If we are not prepared, it would be better to admit, apologize and agree to be prepared for the next time.
- Study group: joining study groups is not always helpful for our study. If the group is not good for us, we should not hesitate to leave it.
However, we do not have to be too anxious about our classmates who looks a genius or our grades. Even though we find that we do not understand, we should not be discouraged about it. Also, we should not waste our time in making our notes perfect.
I remember the moment when a professor started to call students for questions in the first class. Since it was very scary and intense, I might still choose to avoid being called. The tips to reduce the possibility of getting called on was interesting, but I do not think that they would be effective. Regarding the study group, I hesitated to try any study group in the first semester because I was not confident in speaking English. Moreover, I could find several mistakes that I made during the whole semester in the dicta column. With my regret behind me, I would actively take part in the live class at Koabels.
Chapter 4: Navigating the Bluebook of Legal Citation
We need to learn how to use the Bluebook showing a uniform system of citation for legal writing concerning the following things among a lot of citation rules by using the examples in the section of Quick Reference.
- How to cite cases: all case citations consist of the case name, the reporter, the page number of numbers, and the parenthetical. First, case names must be underlined. Second, citing state cases needs to refer both to the state and regional reporter, while federal cases require only the citation of the official reporter. Third, it is necessary to provide the first page where the case begins and the specific pages where the cited document is printed. Then, what we put in the parenthetical for the full citation is different from state and federal cases. In addition, the abbreviation in Table T.9 in the Bluebook is used to cite subsequent history. Lastly, we can cite the case by using shortened form citations like id.
- How to cite law reviews: there are full and short citation forms for law reviews we can use.
- How to cite magazines and newspapers: this is similar to citing law reviews.
- How to cite books: it can be different according to book types of single edition, multi-edition, and multi-volume.
- How to cite codified law: we need to learn how to cite constitutions and statutes.
I still vividly remember how hard it was for me to write the assignments of the writing class because of the complicated legal citations in the Bluebook. Back then, I did not realize the importance of precise citations in legal writing and giving better attention to the misstates of the citation. Nevertheless, I would not be worried about citations if I had another chance to write legal memoranda. This is because I learned the importance of citation through many mistakes.
Chapter 5: Legal Research
This chapter shows the basics of legal research and writing assignments that can be complicated.
- The Goals of Legal Research: according to the principle of stare decisis, we should find law from our jurisdiction in legal research and first define the issue for finding law.
- What You are Looking For: the primary sources of law consist of statutes and judicial opinions that are on point and control the issue. Without statutes, we should find a case or statute with facts similar to the facts of the case from our jurisdiction or the same facts from outside.
- How to Find What You are Looking For: (1) If we have a judicial opinion, we should the electronic databases such as WESTLAW, LEXIS, and the appropriate West digests to decide whether the judicial opinion is good law and can apply to our issue. (2) If we do our assignments with a particular statute, we can start it with Shepard’s Citation showing the application of Statute 101 and the judicial opinions in Statute 101. (3) Without judicial opinion, statute, and clue, we can go to a librarian and WESTLAW or LEXIS representatives to get some help and use a summary of the law or the appropriate code book in our jurisdiction.
- What Secondary Sources Are Available: when we cannot find any information, we can choose other options such as encyclopedias, law reviews, Restatement of the Law, and American Law Reports. As encyclopedias like the C.J.S and Am. Jur. 2d are less helpful than the citations listed in the footnotes, we can use them for case and statute citations. We should be careful of using law reviews as authority because they do not have legal weight in. Also, we can use American Law reports to deal with the most important cases in a particular area and the Restatements of the law in some areas including torts, contracts, and property.
As this chapter said in dicta column, legal research is not simple and easy for students. I also had difficulty in doing legal research because I could not set my goal or scope and just tried to contain every source I found. Back then, the lecturer who taught legal research emphasized the efficient use of electric databases like LEXIS and WESTLAW related to the issue. Hopefully, I can improve my skills of legal writing by continually exercising how to analyze cases and find issues before using some tools.