Reading a Judicial Decision

I. The Opinion

An opinion of a court announces the outcome of the case and states the reasons for the decision reached by the court. Judicial opinions typically begin with an introductory paragraph announcing the issue to be decided and possibly the outcome as well. That paragraph is followed by a description of the facts relevant to the dispute as well as the prior judicial history of the case if the opinion is an appeal from a lower court decision. In an appeal, the party who lost in the court below and who is appealing to a higher court may be referred to as the appellant or the petitioner. The party that won below is the appellee or respondent.

Following the facts and procedural history, the decision will discuss the law relevant to the issue to be decided, whether it is a constitutional provision, statute, a regulation, a common law principle, or some combination of these. The opinion will also discuss previous cases that have addressed the same or a similar issue that will be useful to the court in reaching its decision either because they are binding precedent that the court must follow or because their reasoning is persuasive and the court decides to adopt the same or a similar analysis. Sometimes there may be conflicting precedent, and the court may have to decide which decision to follow and which to reject, assuming neither are binding.

Binding precedent exists where an earlier opinion has decided the exact same issue that the court is now presented with and the court deciding the case is a higher court that the lower court now confronted with the issue is required to follow. The lower court can, for example, be a state trial court required to follow an appellate court of that same state. If the precedent is a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court interpreting the federal constitution or a federal statute or regulation, that decision would be binding on all state and federal courts. If the decision is by the U.S. Supreme Court, none of its prior decisions are binding on that Court. The Supreme Court is free to change its mind and reverse an earlier decision. However, a strong policy in favor of stare decisis, a Latin phrase meaning to stand by things decided, creates a presumption in favor of following precedent. The Court will typically explain at length any decision to depart from precedent or explain why it believes its decision is not a departure. Dissenting Justices may criticize the majority's failure to follow precedent.

Once the court determines the applicable law, it will then apply that law to the facts of the case to reach its decision. The opinion will usually end by announcing what action the court is taking. In an appellate court, that will typically be framed in terms of the impact of the decision on the lower court decision. The appellate court may affirm the decision below, reverse the decision, or remand to the lower court for further proceedings.

If the case is decided by more than a single judge, there may be opinions in addition to the opinion of the court. There may be concurring opinions that agree with the outcome reached in the court's opinion, but not the reasons given. Concurring opinions may rely on different reasoning or, at least, announce some limiting principle that may be relevant in future cases that are similar, but not identical. There may also be dissenting opinions that disagree in both outcome and rationale. Identifying the views of the judges can sometimes be complicated because judges can join parts of opinions, rather than the entire opinion.

A question often asked by students assigned to read cases is what do I need to know when a case is assigned as reading. That isn't an easy question to answer. A case tells a story. You need to understand that story. It starts with the facts, what happened that resulted in a lawsuit being filed, and what procedural history led to the case being before the court issuing the opinion. It goes on to identify the issue or issues that the court must resolve to reach a result in the case and why those issues are critical to the outcome of the case. For each issue, the court identifies a chain of reasoning that leads it to reach a particular conclusion. That chain of reasoning will include the source of law, be it constitutional provision, statute, common law principle or other source, that applies to the situation before the court. It may also include prior cases that decided the same or similar issues that need to be considered in reaching a resolution of a particular legal issue, similarities and differences between those cases and the one before the court, the policies at issue in reaching a decision in the case, the application of the facts of the case to the legal principle the court has decided governs the case, the rationale for the decision reached, and the outcome of the case. In some opinions, a court will also consider the implications of the decision for other cases not before the court. This tells you how broad or narrow the ruling in the case is and what implications it has for subsequent cases.

In addition to the reasoning of the court, the opinion may include information about the arguments made by each of the parties and how the court responds to those arguments. This allows you to think about the case from the point of view of the parties rather than the judge writing the opinion. Did the parties make the right arguments? In a subsequent case, is there some way for a party who appears to be on the losing side to re-frame the issue to avoid defeat?

If there is more than one opinion in the case, you need to also understand the reasoning that underlies each concurring and dissenting opinion as well. These opinions may help you to think critically about the majority opinion. You may conclude one of the other opinions is better reasoned than the majority opinion. In addition, a concurring opinion may give you some insight into the scope of the majority decision as precedent, particularly when a judge whose vote is essential to the outcome announces he or she would not reach the same result if the facts were somewhat different.

II. Constitutional Law Opinions

While opinions deciding constitutional law issues follow the same format and reasoning described above, one additional aspect of such opinions is important. When courts decide constitutional questions, they must first decide what standard or test the court will apply to decide the issue presented. Each area of constitutional law has such standards that apply to particular kinds of cases. In some cases there is no dispute over what standard will apply and the arguments that the parties present concern the application of the standard to the facts. In other cases, two or more standards could potentially apply and the parties will present arguments to convince the court to apply the standard that is most favorable to them. The choice of a standard can be crucial to the parties since it can often control the outcome of the case. The standards vary in terms of which party has the burden of proof on particular issues and how difficult that burden is to satisfy. If the standard is easy for the government to satisfy, it is likely the government will win. By contrast, if it is hard to satisfy then it is likely that the government will lose. Only after identifying the standard that applies will the court apply the facts of the case to that standard to determine the outcome of the case.

III. Technical Information: Caption, Citation, and Author

The opinion will contain a variety of pieces of information. One is the caption or title of the case. This consists of the names of the litigants. If the case is a civil suit, when it is first filed the caption will include the plaintiff(s), the party or parties bringing the lawsuit, and the defendants, the party or parties being sued separated by v. which stands for versus. While the full name may include multiple parties, cases are typically known by a shorthand caption which lists one plaintiff and one defendant. In a criminal case, the party bringing the suit is the government and the person charged with a crime is the defendant.

In addition to the case name, other information about the case is included such as the court that decided the case and the date of the decision. This information may appear in the form of a citation, which is a series of abbreviations including information such as the series of books, called reporters or reports, that contain the decision, the volume in the series, the first page of the decision, the court, the jurisdiction, and the date.

An example of a citation to a United States Supreme Court decision following these rules is 393 U.S. 503 (1969). This refers to volume 393 and page 503 of the United States Reports, a series that only contains decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, and the date of the decision. As of July, 2017, there were 564 bound volumes in this series. The most recent opinion published in volume 564 was issued on June 27, 2011. More recent opinions are printed first on the day of decision in the form of a "bench opinion," a few days later as a "slip opinion," later in a preliminary soft cover volume of the U.S. Reports, and finally in a hard cover bound volume. Between 3 and 5 volumes are added per Term of the Court. The United States Reports is the official government publication of U.S. Supreme Court opinions. In addition, U.S. Supreme Court opinions are also published in bound volumes by two unofficial sources, the Supreme Court Reporter (West Publishing Co.) and the United States Supreme Court Reports, Lawyer's Edition (Lexis). Decisions are also available from multiple online sources.

In most cases, the opinion will next include the name of the judge who wrote the opinion. One exception is an opinion that begins "per curiam." Per curiam is a Latin phrase meaning by the court. A per curiam decision is a majority opinion issued by an appellate court with multiple judges deciding the case. In the federal court system, multi-member decisional bodies include 3 judges on a panel of the court of appeals for a particular federal circuit, an en banc opinion by the full bench of one of the federal circuits, or the 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices. The per curiam designation means that the judges who joined the opinion are acting collectively and no individual judge is signing the opinion. Per curiam decisions usually deal with uncontroversial issues where the court is relying on established legal principles rather than altering the law in some way. However, there are exceptions where the per curiam designation has been used even though the decision is far from routine. The use of a per curiam decision has been criticized when used in this way.