Cracking the Case Method, Legal Analysis for Law School Success
Authors:
Bergman, Paul B. / Goodman, Patrick D. / Holm, Thomas W.
Edition:
3rd
Copyright Date:
2022
10 chapters
have results for statutory interpretation
About the Authors 1 result
- Before founding his consulting company, Tom directed and taught in the UCLA School of Law’s Lawyering Skills Clinical Program for nearly two decades. As director of the Program, he developed and revised the Program’s curriculum and teaching materials; he also trained faculty about effective teaching and critiquing methods. In Lawyering Skills, he taught practice-oriented skills like persuasive writing techniques and strategies, legal research, statutory interpretation, and negotiation. He also taught the Writing Advisor Seminar, an advanced legal writing and editing course associated with the Program. And Tom co-created and taught UCLA’s Introduction to Legal Analysis course, a legal methods course for first-year law students.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 3 Common Argument Strategies 7 results (showing 5 best matches)
- One sure-fire losing strategy is to insist on an unimaginably narrow interpretation of a case precedent. For example, a prosecutor should never argue, “The police officers were not required to give the defendant
- Arguments about the scope of holdings are also a common feature in precedential arguments. To the extent reasonably possible, parties seeking the benefit of a precedent case typically argue for a broad interpretation of its holding, while parties seeking to avoid a precedent case argue for a narrow interpretation. Consider the case of
- The abstract nature of so many legal principles also contributes to the prevalence of analogical arguments. Since abstract legal terms such as due process of law and equal protection of the laws have no direct referents, they take on meaning through judges’ interpretations in the context of concrete situations that give rise to legal disputes. As a result, arguments about the meaning of abstract terms often analogize the circumstances of a case to others that have already been decided.
- Thus, in the service of their rhetorical goals, judges and lawyers may make a variety of historical arguments. For example, a historical argument may refer to a rule’s duration as a reason for its continued enforcement. Another form of historical argument is that the understanding that existed at the time that a rule was adopted should control its interpretation.
- Because our legal tradition places so much emphasis on values such as fairness and consistency, lawyers and judges frequently rely on analogous arguments to focus on important similarities and distinctions. For example, return to the burglary example that raised the issue of whether a detached garage was a dwelling for purposes of a law providing for enhanced punishment of those who burgle dwellings. Assume that a statute or court opinion provides that for property tax purposes, the square footage of a dwelling includes the square footage of any detached garage on the same parcel of property. If so, the prosecutor may argue by analogy that if a detached garage is part of a dwelling for property tax purposes, it should also constitute a dwelling for purposes of the burglary statute. The defense attorney would of course seek to argue that the circumstances and policy concerns are so distinct that the property tax rule should have no impact on the interpretation of the burglary statute.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 5 Sources of Law 6 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Though federal law is superior to state law on issues relating to the United States Constitution or federal laws and regulations, state law is superior when state law governs the outcome of legal disputes. And every state maintains its own hierarchy of law analogous to the federal structure: a state constitution at the top, state statutes next, followed by state regulations, and rounded out by state court judicial opinions. Fifty states, fifty nearly-identical hierarchies. Thus, just as Congress can overturn a federal judge’s interpretation of federal law by enacting a revised law, so too might a state legislature overturn a state court’s interpretation of a state statute or regulation by enacting a revised state statute.
- is the principle that judges should rule in accord with legal principles established in previous opinions by judges who occupy the same rather than a higher rung of the ladder. For example, once a circuit court of appeal opinion adopts a particular interpretation of a federal statute, all other circuit court of appeal judges in the same circuit should strive to apply that same interpretation in later cases. Thus
- federal source—be it statutory, regulatory, or judicial—is superior to any conflicting state law.
- Looking first at the federal judicial hierarchy, the United States Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of the United States Constitution, federal laws and federal regulations. The Supreme Court’s interpretations of the Constitution, federal laws and federal regulations are binding on all federal and state judges. The next rung down from the Supreme Court in the federal judicial system consists of intermediate appellate courts, called Circuit Courts of Appeal. Circuit Courts are bound by United States Supreme Court decisions, but the decisions of Circuit Courts in turn bind all lower federal courts in the same (but not other) circuits. These lower courts include District Courts (the name for federal trial courts), Magistrates Courts, and other specialized courts such as Bankruptcy Courts.
- If a federal judge on any rung of the judicial ladder is called upon to apply state law (as they are in “diversity” cases when a citizen of one state sues a citizen of a different state in federal court), a state court judge’s interpretation of that law is also binding on the federal court judge. The reason is that the Tenth Amendment exclusively reserves the creation of state law to the states, not to federal authorities.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 8 Reading and Briefing Cases 1 result
- Even after Parliament came into existence, it did not gain the power to create statutory law until long after the common law began to develop. For a few centuries, judges’ common law decisions were the chief source of law in England.
- most people would probably agree that speeding down a main highway at rush hour in order to get home in time to watch a sports event constitutes careless driving (or worse, perhaps reckless driving). On the other hand, a parent who engages in the same behavior in order to get a seriously ill child to a hospital emergency room may not be judged careless. But whatever decision you come to, the point is that whether the principle that drivers must compensate those harmed by their carelessness is statutory or judge-made law, the judge will engage in the analytical processes sanctioned by the common law tradition.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 1 The Case Method and Its Myths 4 results
- -like world in which judges can imitate Humpty Dumpty and interpret legal principles to mean whatever the judges want them to mean. The interpretations that lawyers, judges and legislators have given to legal principles over the years generally establish boundaries within which arguments must fall to have legitimacy.
- And of course, not all legal disputes require interpretation of and arguments about indeterminate legal rules. Indeed, prior judicial opinions quite commonly conclusively resolve questions about whether abstract legal principles apply to a factual scenario. For instance, no government prosecutor would argue that a criminal suspect has a right to due process of law only after the suspect is formally charged with a crime. For the time being and the foreseeable future, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that due process rights can attach to suspects before criminal charges are filed.
- matter, many legal scholars are dissatisfied with the method’s stranglehold on the first year curriculum. This chapter has already alluded to one common criticism: the Case Method’s focus on appellate court cases. Another common criticism is that in an era of statutes, codes and administrative regulations, law schools should devote less time to the output of appellate courts and more time to statutory analysis and the Administrative State.
- A second common reason why legal disputes do not necessarily involve interpretation of indeterminate legal rules is that some rules are determinate. A famous example is Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which requires that a person be at least 35 years old to be President of the country.
- Open Chapter
- (Relevant law: The facts are set in Maine simply to give you a real place to think about. However, you should think of the state as New Maine, a new state that has no judicial precedents yet. New Maine has adopted the UCC which applies to the sale of goods, but has no other relevant statutory law. All assigned case materials and Restatement provisions in the casebook should thus be treated as applicable persuasive authority).
- Open Chapter
Chapter 6 Casebooks 2 results
- So appellate court judges virtually always ignore an appellant’s claim that amounts to little more than, “the jury had no business accepting the testimony of the abject liars called to the stand by my opponent.” Errors of law include such matters as the validity of and proper interpretation of statutes, lack of jurisdiction, jury instructions
- .... The opinions in casebooks generally address disputes of the type that students should be able to understand and that raise legal issues that tend to arise repeatedly. The idea is that beginning law students should become familiar with arguments that relate to bedrock interpretations of legal principles. But occasionally casebook authors choose opinions that address complex and unfamiliar factual settings and that involve narrow and eccentric legal issues that infrequently arise. These opinions can be troublesome if the opinion-writers neglect to address the more fundamental legal issues that you have to understand if you are to grasp the arguments that pertain to the eccentric legal issue. (Another possibility is that the casebook author edited out an opinion-writer’s discussion of fundamental legal issues.) In these situations, you will have to rely on classroom discussion or other opinions in the same section of the casebook to provide the stepping-stones that may enable you...
- Open Chapter
- Publication Date: June 13th, 2022
- ISBN: 9781636595481
- Subject: Academic Success
- Series: Academic and Career Success
- Type: Academic/Prof. Development
-
Description:
For about 150 years, law schools have relied on the Case Method to
teach the skills and art of legal analysis to first-year law students. Yet many first-year
students struggle academically. They do not struggle because they lack intellectual ability.
Instead, they struggle because they are suddenly immersed in a unique and seemingly opaque
educational process where nobody has concretely explained what they should
try to learn, much less how to learn it. So these students are forced to try
to understand their professors’ teaching methods on their own—a difficult task for many
beginning students, even those who may “get it” but cannot articulate what “it”
is.
So students understandably ask fundamental questions like the following. Why do reading assignments consist of appellate court opinions? Why do professors rely on the Socratic Method? Why do law school classes so often leave students with more questions than answers? Why do professors’ teaching methods differ from their assessment methods and how can students bridge that gap? What do instructors look for when they grade essay exam answers? Why can law students believe they knew “all the rules,” yet get poor grades?
Cracking the Case Method, 3d ed., provides concise and accessible instruction on how to succeed in law school by answering these questions—and many others. Students need to know what to study and how the opinions they read and discuss in class relate to law school exams. This book provides an in-depth examination of these critical topics:- The Case Method: 1) how it relates to Socratic-style questioning, and 2) how it helps develop analytical skills.
- Semester-long strategies for learning how to “think like a lawyer” by getting the most out of reading judicial opinions, attending classes, outlining, and preparing for exams.
- An analytical framework that helps students read appellate court cases to focus on legal issues, legal principles, and judges’ reasons for adopting and applying those principles.
- Twenty examples that illustrate this analytical framework; these examples discuss essential legal principles from first-year courses and use judicial opinions often assigned in these courses.
- How to develop case briefs and use them to prepare for class discussions, outlining, and exams—with illustrations drawn from two sample annotated briefs.
- The major types of legal argument—with many illustrations drawn from actual cases.
- How to use class discussions to practice legal analysis, demonstrated with annotated excerpts from actual first-year class discussions.
- How to prepare for exams with the following learning and study tools: 1) developing traditional or visual outlines of course materials; 2) analyzing hypotheticals; 3) creating checklists and flowcharts; and 4) practicing exam-taking skills.
- An approach for analyzing exam questions and writing effective exam answers that display powerful analytical skills—with illustrations drawn from actual essay exam questions and annotated answers.
- An opportunity for students to practice all the learning, writing, and analytical skills discussed in this book to a new case in a sample torts class, including the following skills: 1) reading the case; 2) briefing the case; 3) discussing the case in class; 4) incorporating the principles from the case into an outline; and 5) answering an exam question related to the case.
This book provides indispensable information to people considering law school, preparing for their 1L year, or currently attending law school.