Volume II, Chapter §1.5
The Foundations of Authority |
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How to Read a Case
Introduction
A court opinion is also called a case. This section of the manual breaks down the elements of a court opinion, which is law.
Case Law:
How to Find It
Finding a case is actually quite simple. Since a citation will always include a volume, publication, and page number, the researcher simply has to locate the publication within the law library, find the volume, and turn to the page number. The exercise is simply designed to help you become familiar with the books containing the law. Those books are reports and reporters.
Start to think of cases in terms of whether they are state law or federal law. For instance, Federal Reporters contain federal cases. Regions are collection of states. Thus, regional reporters contain state cases. Understanding this will later help you focus your research.
The abbreviations for various publications will be covered later.
Paralegal Perspectives . . .
CASES
One of the reasons research is scary at first is because so many of the books look alike. The Pacific Reporter looks just like the Atlantic Reporter, which looks just like the Federal Supplement. And so forth. This can be intimidating. But once a paralegal simply looks up a few cases and becomes comfortable with the structure of a citation, the books become accessible, and much less scary.
READING CASES
Once you find a case, check the synopsis (also called syllabus) and look for the words '...the court held...' That is what matters. That is the portion of the synopsis that determines the 'logic' or 'reasoning' of the court. It will help you determine very quickly how, and whether, the case applies to your client's facts.
Lecture Notes . . .
How to Read Case Law
This becomes more important a bit later when you are given a legal writing assignment and have to read the assigned cases. One suggestion might be to add this to your Favorites list on your browser for later reference. For now, let's discuss a few points.
Caption
The caption is the title of the case. It also includes the year the opinion was written and the court that wrote the opinion.
Syllabus
This is a short summary of the case. Always look for how the court held.
Holding
The "holding" of a case is what the court decided, or the answer the court found. The holding is mentioned at the end of the syllabus, unofficially. To quote the holding, you must locate the holding within the opinion itself, usually at the very end.
Headnotes
These short paragraphs are summaries of parts of the case. They are provided by the publisher. The Headnote number (number 1, number 2, number 3, etc.) is important, because it relates to a bracketed number (Headnote Reference Point) in the actual opinion. For instance, if Headnote number 4 is the only point of interest for you, you would look for a bracketed number 4 in the opinion. This is a great tool for a paralegal acting as a researcher. The headnotes allow you to very quickly determine whether a case is worth reading.
Don't confuse Headnote numbers with the Key Number System. The Key Number System is a research tool that relates to West Digests and Westlaw (electronic legal research), which will be discussed later.
Even though the Headnotes are very strong research tools, they are provided by the publisher, and therefore should not be quoted. They are non-authority.
Line of Demarcation
This simple line tells the researcher that everything above the line is provided by the publisher and cannot be quoted, and that everything below the line is the word-for-word opinion of the court. The Majority opinion becomes law. If there is a Dissenting opinion, it disagrees with the results of the majority. If there is a concurring opinion, it agrees, but for a different reason than that expressed by the majority.
The Majority opinion may be quoted as primary authority.
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