Attacking the Reading Getting Through the Legal Assignment

Law schools revolve around the casebook. Before classes start, you will be asked to purchase a number of fat textbooks, each more expensive than the next, filled with cases and commentaries. Although casebooks are organized under a variety of systems, there are some routine patterns. Generally, each section in a casebook will contain one or two "big" cases that are supposed to explain a specific principle of law. After the big case(s) comes a series of notes mentioning smaller cases and scholarly works that refine the general legal principle at issue. For instance, a Constitutional Law text may contain a lengthy excerpt from the unanimous Supreme Court opinion in Brown v. Board of Education-the decision that prohibited segregation in public schools-and then subsequent notes will discuss 10 cases that followed Brown to clarify the opinion's impact. A given night's reading for one class will normally contain only one or two big cases.

To attack the reading, you'll need a few tools: the casebook, a pen and paper or computer, and a good legal dictionary. Some One-Ls are reluctant to invest in a legal dictionary, assuming that they'll be able to figure out most terms based on context. If you have any hope of understanding the One-L year, however, you should save yourself some time and a great deal of grief and purchase a good dictionary (i.e., Black's Legal Dictionary) on your first day. Otherwise, you'll be left in a world of confusion attempting to discern the meaning of phrases such as "an action in assumpsit," "plaintiff demurred to the complaint," or "we think res ipsaloquitor." As mentioned in the last chapter, law is filled with a tremendous amount of arcane language, some Latin and some English. Even the words you think you know-for instance, "removal" or "service"-can take on special meanings in the legal context. Learning the language of the law is a slow process, but one that you will grasp more quickly if you spend the time initially.


Your first reading assignment will probably take you a long time, both because you're not familiar with reading cases and because every other sentence will require the use of the dictionary. Just try to stay focused, however, and know that your hard work in the first few weeks will soon start to pay dividends.

Each time you come across a word you do not understand, it's best to circle the word and write a definition in the margin of the casebook. Few things make a student look more prepared in class than a quick answer to a question such as "What is trover?" or "What did the judge mean when she said that the issue was sui generis?" Although some students do not want to write down definitions, you'll find that it helps in the long term both for class preparation and studying for exams.

After you learn to understand the language of a case, you can begin to try to figure out the legal principles at issue. Keep in mind for which class you are doing the reading. You will read differently for your various classes. In Civil Procedure, for instance, the professor is going to be less concerned with the substantive law than with the procedure of the case (who sued whom, how it got into this court, what is the source of jurisdiction). In Contracts, by contrast, the professor is more likely to focus on the nature of the agreement between the parties.

You then tackle the reading slowly. Casebook reading takes a lot more time than most books you read in college, and you'll probably find it hard to understand the material if you're also watching the Simpsons or listening to Bob Marley. After you've found some peace and quiet and opened your casebook, start by trying to figure out the "big picture" idea behind each case. In Property, the case may stand for the idea that a landlord cannot break a lease without a good reason. In Criminal Law, the case may decide that a murder conviction is only appropriate where the defendant intended to kill the victim. Regardless of the class or the assignment, there is normally at least one big idea in each reading assignment. That big idea is usually called the "general rule" or "rule" of the case(s).

A crucial skill that you will learn is to search for the "holding" of the case. The holding tends to be the most important portion of the court's opinion because it is where you learn definitively what the judges have decided. "Dicta," by contrast, is that portion of the opinion ultimately irrelevant to the result reached. A couple of examples may help clarify the distinction.

"Mr. Jones is clearly a good individual. When the bank teller accidentally gave him $1,000,000 rather than the $10 he intended to withdraw, he did what anybody else might have done-he purchased a large home for his family and a pony for his child. Nonetheless, we find that he had an obligation to return the money to the bank because he knew it was not his own."

Although the first two sentences are interesting and contain useful information, the court's holding is that Mr. Jones was obligated to return the money to the bank because he knew it did not belong to him.

"When Ms. Jones refused to testify at her trial for robbery, the trial judge called her decision 'very suspicious' and told the jury that 'only a guilty person does not testify.' The judge appears to have forgotten that in our legal system, the accused need not testify on her own behalf and is presumed innocent. But Ms. Jones did not object to the judge's remarks in a timely fashion, and therefore waived her right to appeal on this issue."

Insofar as the comments about the judge's error in this case are irrelevant to the ultimate decision, they represent dicta. The holding of this case is that the accused waived her right to complain about the judge's comments by not objecting to them in a timely fashion.

It's important to understand the holding of every major case that you read. Class time is often spent testing the limits of a decision's holding and seeing how it might apply to a different set of facts. Ultimately, exams will also test this same skill by giving you a complicated set of facts different from any case that you have read. Professors want to see your ability to take a general rule from one case and apply it to another. The only way to succeed in this endeavor is to understand the rule that each case provides.