Pleаse reаd the fоllоwing excerpt. The questiоns thаt follow are based on this excerpt. How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students By Orin S. Kerr This essay is designed to help new law students prepare for the first few weeks of class. It explains what judicial opinions are, how they are structured, and what law students should look for when reading them. What’s in a Legal Opinion? When two people disagree and that disagreement leads to a lawsuit, the lawsuit will sometimes end with a ruling by a judge in favor of one side. The judge will explain the ruling in a written document referred to as an “opinion.” The opinion explains what the case is about, discusses the relevant legal principles, and then applies the law to the facts to reach a ruling in favor of one side and against the other. Modern judicial opinions reflect hundreds of years of history and practice. They usually follow a simple and predictable formula. This section takes you through the basic formula. It starts with the introductory materials at the top of an opinion and then moves on to the body of the opinion. The Caption The first part of the case is the title of the case, known as the “caption.” Examples include Brown v. Board of Education and Miranda v. Arizona. The caption usually tells you the last names of the person who brought the lawsuit and the person who is being sued. These two sides are often referred to as the “parties” or as the “litigants” in the case. For example, if Ms. Smith sues Mr. Jones, the case caption may be Smith v. Jones (or, depending on the court, Jones v. Smith). The Case Citation Below the case name you will find some letters and numbers. These letters and numbers are the legal citation for the case. A citation tells you the name of the court that decided the case, the law book in which the opinion was published, and the year in which the court decided the case. For example, “U.S. Supreme Court, 485 U.S. 759 (1988)” refers to a U.S. Supreme Court case decided in 1988 that appears in Volume 485 of the United States Reports starting at page 759. The Author of the Opinion The next information is the name of the judge who wrote the opinion. Most opinions assigned in law school were issued by courts with multiple judges. The name tells you which judge wrote that particular opinion. In older cases, the opinion often simply states a last name followed by the initial “J.” No, judges don’t all have the first initial “J.” The letter stands for “Judge” or “Justice,” depending on the court. The Facts of the Case Now let’s move on to the opinion itself. The first part of the body of the opinion presents the facts of the case. In other words, what happened? The facts might be that Andy pulled out a gun and shot Bob. Or maybe Fred agreed to give Sally $100 and then changed his mind. Surprisingly, there are no particular rules for what facts a judge must include in the fact section of an opinion. Sometimes the fact sections are long, and sometimes they are short. Sometimes they are clear and accurate, and other times they are vague or incomplete. Most discussions of the facts also cover the “procedural history” of the case. The procedural history explains how the legal dispute worked its way through the legal system to the court that is issuing the opinion. It will include various motions, hearings, and trials that occurred after the case was initially filed. The Law of the Case After the opinion presents the facts, it 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 second stage of the legal section applies the general legal principles to the particular facts of the dispute. As you might guess, this part is in many ways the heart of the opinion: It gets to the bottom line of why the court is ruling for one side and against the other. Types of Disputes and the Names of Participants In a civil case, one person files a lawsuit against another asking the court to order the other side to pay him money or to do or stop doing something. An award of money is called “damages” and an order to do something or to refrain from doing something is called an “injunction.” The person bringing the lawsuit is known as the “plaintiff” and the person sued is called the “defendant.” In legal disputes, each party ordinarily is represented by a lawyer. Legal opinions use several different words for lawyers, including “attorney” and “counsel.” Terms in Appellate Litigation Most opinions that you read in law school are appellate opinions, which means that they decide the outcome of appeals. An “appeal” is a legal proceeding that considers whether another court’s legal decision was right or wrong. After a court has ruled for one side, the losing side may seek review of that decision by filing an appeal before a higher court. The original court is usually known as the trial court, because that’s where the trial occurs if there is one. The higher court is known as the appellate or appeals court, as it is the court that hears the appeal. A single judge presides over trial court proceedings, but appellate cases are decided by panels of several judges. For example, in the federal court system, run by the United States government, a single trial judge known as a District Court judge oversees the trial stage. Cases can be appealed to the next higher court, the Court of Appeals, where cases are decided by panels of three judges known as Circuit Court judges. A side that loses before the Circuit Court can seek review of that decision at the United States Supreme Court. Supreme Court cases are decided by all nine judges. Supreme Court judges are called Justices instead of judges; there is one “Chief Justice” and the other eight are just plain “Justices” (technically they are “Associate Justices,” but everyone just calls them “Justices”). During the proceedings before the higher court, the party that lost at the original court and is therefore filing the appeal is usually known as the “appellant.” The party that won in the lower court and must defend the lower court’s decision is known as the “appellee” (accent on the last syllable). Know the Facts Law professors love the facts. When they call on students in class, they typically begin by asking students to state the facts of a particular case. Facts are important because law is often highly fact-sensitive, which is a fancy way of saying that the proper legal outcome depends on the exact details of what happened. If you don’t know the facts, you can’t really understand the case and can’t understand the law. 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. The lawyers, not the judges, take the lead role in framing the issues raised by a case. In an appeal, for example, the lawyer for the appellant will articulate specific ways in which the lower court was wrong. The appellate court will then look at those arguments and either agree or disagree. Know the Disposition The “disposition” 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 then “remand” the case, sending it back to the lower court for further proceedings. For now, you should keep in mind that when a higher court “affirms” it means that the lower court had it right (in result, if not in reasoning). Words like “reverse,” “remand,” and “vacate” means that the higher court though the lower court had it wrong. 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. [In this class, the cases you read will mostly interpret “the common law,” which is a term that usually refers to the body of prior case decisions.] After you have identified the source of law, you should next identify the method of reasoning that the court used to justify its decision. When past courts have already answered similar questions before, a court may conclude that it is required to reach a particular result because it is bound by the past precedents. This is an application of the judicial practice of “stare decisis,” an abbreviation of a Latin phrase meaning “That which has been already decided should remain settled.” In other settings, courts may justify their decisions on public policy grounds. That is, they may pick the rule that they think is the best rule, and they may explain in the opinion why they think that rule is best. This is particularly likely in common law cases where judges are not bound by a statute or constitutional rule. Other courts will rely on morality, fairness, or notions of justice to justify their decisions. Many courts will mix and match, relying on several or even all of these justifications. Understand the Significance of the Major Opinion Some opinions resolve the parties’ legal dispute by announcing and applying a clear rule of law that is new to that particular case. That rule is known as the “holding” of the case. When a court announces a clear holding, you should take a minute to think about how the court’s rule would apply in other situations. During class, professors like to pose “hypotheticals,” new sets of facts that are different from those found in the cases you have read. They do this for two reasons. First, it’s hard to understand the significance of a legal rule unless you think about how it might apply to lots of different situations. A rule might look good in one setting, but another set of facts might reveal a major problem or ambiguity. Second, judges often reason by “analogy,” which means a new case may be governed by an older case when the facts of the new case are similar to those of the older one. This raises the question, which are the legally relevant facts for this particular rule? The best way to evaluate this is to consider new sets of facts. You’ll spend a lot of time doing this in class, and you can get a head start on your class discussions by asking the hypotheticals on your own before class begins. Finally, you should accept that some opinions are vague. Sometimes a court won’t explain its reasoning very well, and that forces us to try to figure out what the opinion means. You’ll look for the holding of the case but become frustrated because you can’t find one. It’s not your fault; some opinions are written in a narrow way so that there is no clear holding, and others are just poorly reasoned or written. Rather than trying to fill in the ambiguity with false certainty, try embracing the ambiguity instead.
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