Case Brief Format Used In Law Class and Exam Preparations

There are many different ways to brief a case. You should use the format that is most useful for your class and exam preparations. Regardless of form, every brief should include the following information.

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1. CAPTION

A brief should begin with the case name, the court that decided it, the year it was decided, and the page on which it appears in the casebook. The court is included to indicate the precedential value of the opinion. The precedential value depends on the court level-trial, intermediate appellate, or court of last resort-and on whether it is a state or federal court. Including the court also will be helpful when you are synthesizing the cases in that section of materials. The year of decision also is included to help assess the opinion's precedential value. Older cases may have been modified or reversed by more recent ones.

2. FACTS

Next, state the facts of the case. This section is necessary because legal principles are defined by the situations in which they arise. For example, assume you are briefing a case in which the defendant was convicted of murder. If your brief only states that killing is a crime without stating the facts of the case, you could mistakenly apply that principle to a case in which the defendant killed in self-defense. Only by stating the circumstances concerning the killing will you have an accurate picture of the law.

Include in your brief only those facts that are legally relevant. A fact is legally relevant if it had an impact on the case's outcome. For example, in a personal injury action arising from a car accident, the color of the parties' cars seldom would be relevant to the case's outcome. The defendant's liability will not turn on whether the injured party's car was green, rather than blue. Therefore, do not include that fact in your brief even if the court mentions it in the opinion. Similarly, if the plaintiff and defendant presented different versions of the facts, you should describe those differences only if they are relevant to the court's consideration of the case. Otherwise, just state the facts upon which the court relied. Because you will not know which facts are legally relevant until you have read and deciphered the entire case, do not try to brief a case while reading it for the first time.

3. PROCEDURAL HISTORY

With the statement of facts, you have taken the case to the point at which the plaintiff filed suit. The next section of the brief, the procedural history, begins at that point and ends with the case's appearance in the court that wrote the opinion you are reading. For a trial court opinion, identify the type of legal action the plaintiff brought. For an appellate court opinion, also describe how the trial court and, if applicable, the lower appellate court decided the case and why. In addition to setting the stage for the opinion you are briefing, describing the, case's procedural history helps you learn judicial procedures.

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4. ISSUES

You are now ready to describe the opinion you are briefing. In this section of the brief, state the factual and legal questions that the court had to decide. For example, assume the plaintiff claims that the defendant made a gift of a watch to her but now denies that he made the gift. For a gift to be legally enforceable, the person who claims it (the alleged "donee") must prove that (1) the person who allegedly made the gift ("the donor") intended to make a gift, (2) the alleged donor delivered the gift to the donee in accordance with the legal requirements for a delivery, and (3) the alleged donee accepted the gift. In this case, do not state the issue as: "Does the plaintiff win?" or "Was there a gift?" Instead, include in the issue statement each question that the court had to decide to answer the ultimate question of whether the defendant made a legally enforceable gift. If the court addressed all three requirements for a valid gift, you should include three issues in your case brief:

1. Did defendant intend to make a gift to plaintiff?;
    
2. Did defendant deliver the watch to plaintiff?; and
    
3. Did plaintiff accept the gift?

These are the questions the court had to answer to decide who is legally entitled to the watch.

Sometimes students think that they should consolidate all the issues in a case into one large issue.

That is the wrong approach. To analyze a case properly, you must break it down to its component parts. Otherwise, you will have a tangled skein of facts, law, and analysis. Dissecting the case allows you to deal with one question at a time, rather than trying to deal with all the questions at once.

5. HOLDINGS

In this section, separately answer each question in the issues section. For quick reference, first state the answer in a word or two, such as "yes" or "no." Then, in a sentence or two, state the legal principle on which the court relied to reach that answer (the "holding"). To do so, you must distinguish the holding from "dictum" (pi. "dicta"). The holding is the legal principle that was essential to the court's resolution of the issue. Dictum, on the other hand, is any nonessential principle that the court may have included in the opinion.

Dictum is not included in a case brief because it does not; have precedential value. Although dictum can provide an insight into the court's thoughts about a related issue, the court is free to ignore it in future cases. Dictum is nonbinding because it was not directly related to the issue that the court had to decide and, therefore, may not have been considered by the court as carefully as a holding. Additionally, neither the plaintiff nor the defendant may have addressed the dictum's relevance and accuracy.

You must state the holdings as accurately as possible, because this section of the case briefs will be particularly important for exam preparation. Check whether your description of a holding is too broad by thinking of any exceptions or qualifications. For example, if you stated the holding as "killing is a crime," that holding would include a person who killed in self-defense. Therefore, narrow this statement of the holding. Similarly, check whether your description is too narrow by questioning the relevance of each part. For example, if the victim in the case was a man, the statement "killing a man without legal justification is a crime" is technically correct. However, no legally relevant reason exists for distinguishing between male and female victims, so broaden this statement. A horn-book or other study aid can help you determine the exact scope of the holding.

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