Brown v. Board of Education Case Brief

Brown v. Board of Education Case Brief

[Brown v. Board of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954)][footnoteRef:1] [1: Case citation format is as follows: (1) names of the parties in “X v. (versus) Y” form, italicized; (2) volume # of the “reporter,” or publication, in which the case is published; (3) the abbreviation of the name of the reporter in which the case is published, e.g. “U.S.” for “U.S. Reports,” a major publisher of Supreme Court opinions, or “F.2d” for the Federal Reporter 2d Series, which publishes federal appeals court decisions; (4) the page number of the first page of the reporter on which the case appears; (5) parentheses enclosing the abbreviation of the court deciding the case and the year in which the case is decided, e.g., (7th Circ. 2004) for a decision of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued in 2004. For US Supreme Court cases, only the year of decision is within the parentheses, because the reporters that publish Supreme Court decisions do not publish decisions of any other courts – therefore you know when you see the reporter name earlier in the case citation (e.g., 450 U.S. 23), that you are reading a US Supreme Court decision and there is no need to repeat that in parentheses later in the citation. ]

[VERY IMPORTANT: READ THE CASE THROUGH FULLY AT LEAST ONCE BEFORE BRIEFING]

Legally Relevant Facts:

This sets out, in as brief a form as possible, what happened between the parties to bring about a legal dispute. Leave out any details or facts that are not significant to the claims and defenses presented by the parties and/or to the court’s analysis of and decision on those issues. The important facts are generally those that tend to either establish or disprove the “elements” of a legal claim or defense. A judicial opinion typically has a brief summary of the facts at the beginning or after a short introductory paragraph that indicates what the case is about. As you read the court’s analysis of the legal claims further in the opinion, keep an eye on which of the facts they rely on and indicate are important to their analysis and conclusions. These are the facts you want to be sure to include in your brief.

For example, if I want to sue you for negligence when your tree falls on my house, I have to prove four elements of a negligence claim: that you had a duty of care toward me, that you violated that duty of care, that I suffered harm, and that your violation was a sufficiently direct cause of that harm. In briefing the judicial decision on my claim, you would want to summarize the facts that are relevant to establishing or disproving those elements. Examples might include whether the tree that fell was very old and reasonably appeared to the neighbors for some time like it was going to fall down; whether similar incidents had happened in the past with your trees; whether I had expressed concern to you about this tree before; etc.

You should not use this section to describe the procedural history of the case once it got into the court system – there is a separate section for that, which comes next (see below).

When setting out the facts, start by first using the parties’ names (from the caption) and include in parentheses after the name, abbreviations for the respective parties to keep further references throughout your brief short and manageable. Choose any way you want to abbreviate the parties’ names, just stick with it throughout the brief.

Procedural History:

Here you would provide a brief description of what happened in the courts on this case before the decision you are briefing here – in other words, don’t include anything about what happened in the decision you are briefing. You should describe briefly who sued (or criminally charged) whom, what type(s) of legal claims were asserted by the party suing/charging, and what actions the courts have taken so far with respect to those claims and why (their reasoning, again described in brief terms).

Issue(s):

In yes-or-no question form if possible, this is a one-line recitation of the legal issue presented in the case, and it should incorporate two things – the key facts that raise the issue of law (e.g., the behavior that gave rise to a claim of negligence or breach of contract, or to a murder charge) and the legal claim or theory that is being made.

For example, “May a mother whose religion counsels against medical treatment for ailments, and who fails to call a doctor when her child has repeatedly coughed up blood, be charged with criminal negligence?” The question contains, as concisely as possible, the relevant facts and the type of claim at issue. If there is more than one legal claim before the court, then there should be a separate question for each of the legal claims.

Holding(s):

This is the court’s answer to the issue(s) above, i.e. its statement of how the law resolves them. The corresponding holdings should begin with “yes” or “no” followed by an appropriate declaration answering the question posed by the issue(s). Your holding should give a brief sense of the reasoning underlying it — the details of the reasoning will be fleshed out more in the Reasoning section below.

For example, a holding in response to the issue posed above could read, “Yes, a mother whose religion counsels against medical treatment for ailments, and who fails to call a doctor when her child has repeatedly coughed up blood, may be charged with criminal negligence, because the state has a strong interest in protecting the well-being of children and a parent’s right to free exercise of religion does not include a right to impose her own religiously based opposition to medical care on her children.”

The idea with the Issue and Holding is that if you literally only read those two parts of a case brief – or even just the holding, since it effectively repeats the issue – you will know what the case is about and its resolution, in a nutshell. You should be able to copy the holding into an email to a supervisor or other person you are advising about a recent case, and in one sentence, tell them what the case was about and how it was resolved. Then you can go on to tell the person you are advising, what the significance of the case is for him/her or the organization s/he works with. In this way, writing a good holding is a great step toward writing short, useful advisory communications, valuable in any professional walk of life.

Judgment:

State these with vote count, i.e. how many judges or justices agreed with the judgment and how many dissented. FYI, you will only get the potential for dissent, or any kind of split decision, in cases that have been decided by an appellate-level court, i.e. state or federal courts of appeals or state/US supreme court – this is because only appellate-level cases are decided by more than one judge. Trial-level cases are heard by a single judge.

Examples: 5 (Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito) – 4 (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan);

2 (Easterbrook, Posner) – 1 (Flaum)

This indicates what happened in the court whose decision you are briefing AND what, if anything, will happen next in the court system with respect to the case. It is typically stated expressly at the very end of the court’s decision. Here are the options:

Affirmed: This means that the appellate-level court agrees with the decision of the lower court, even if it uses different reasoning to get there.

Reversed: This means that the appellate-level court disagrees with the decision of the lower court, because it believes that the trial court applied the wrong rule of law to decide the case, or applied the right rule wrongly to the facts, or made a significant and clear error in determining what the facts were. When the lower court’s decision is reversed, the appellate court may send the case back to the lower court to correct its error (e.g., to apply the right rule of law to the facts, as described by the appellate-level court).

Sending the case back is called remanding the case. It is common to see the outcome “Reversed and remanded.” But, in some cases there is nothing further for the lower court to do – for example, when the choice was between two ways of applying the rule of law to the facts of the case, and the appellate court finds that the lower court made the wrong choice. Once the appellate court identifies the right choice, it would be a waste of time and money for the court system and the parties to require that they go through the formality of another proceeding at the lower court level. Instead, the case will simply end at the appellate level (assuming there is no further review available, i.e. from a supreme court) with the winner and loser being switched.

Vacated: Vacating a lower court decision wipes the lower court’s decision and reasoning off the books entirely; it’s as if the decision never occurred and it has no legal importance. If there is more for the lower court to do with the case, the appellate court will not only vacate but also remand to the lower court, and the parties will start again at that lower court.

Affirming, reversing, vacating, and remanding may all be done in part, if a case presents more than one issue. For example, if an appellate-level court agrees with how the lower court decided one issue presented by a case but disagrees with how it decided another issue and wants to send that part back to the lower court to redo, the outcome is affirmed-in-part, reversed-in-part, and remanded.

In this section of your brief, if the case involves more than one issue, you want to indicate which of these outcomes happened to which issues in the case, e.g. “Affirmed district court ruling that Y was negligent; reversed and remanded district court ruling that Y had breached his contract with X.”

Reasoning:

When there is more than one judge issuing the decision, indicate who wrote the opinion and who else joined it.

This is the heart of a case brief because it summarizes as briefly and cogently as possible the court’s reasons for deciding the case as it did. This involves stating the rules of law the court used to decide the case – which courts usually announce at the start of the section of their opinions that contain their reasoning – and how the court applied those rules to the facts of the case. Don’t just repeat every point, big or small, the court makes; focus on the main arguments or lines of reasoning the court uses to reach its conclusion. Only refer to specific precedents if they seem particularly important to the court’s conclusion about what the applicable legal rule is, or if the court is comparing/contrasting the facts or legal principles involved in this case with those of the earlier case.

Concurrence/Dissent:

Make a separate row here for each separate opinion i.e. each concurrence or dissent, indicating who wrote it and who joined it – i.e., “Roberts, joined by Alito and Thomas”

This is where you summarize briefly any concurring and/or dissenting opinions, noting the name of the judge/justice and whether s/he is concurring or dissenting. This should focus on the reasons for writing separately, i.e. how the reasoning of the dissenting judge differed from that of the majority, or what points a concurring judge emphasized separately from the majority opinion, etc.

Analysis/Comments:

This is a place for your own thoughts and comments; think about the significance of the decision and what it may mean to people going forward, who it is likely to affect and how. In that regard, you should note any statements that may be significant as guidance from the court for future cases.

 

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