Case-Brief Style Guide
A case brief is a short, structured summary of a single court decision. The goal is one page (~1,200 words) that a non-lawyer can read in ten minutes and come away with a real grasp of what the court decided, why, and why it still matters.
Standard structure
Every brief in this library follows the same seven sections, in this order:
1. Parties and caption
Formal case name, citation, court, and year. Also: who the parties actually were (not just the caption — "Linda Brown was an 8-year-old in Topeka" is more useful than "Brown, plaintiff").
2. Facts
What happened before the case got to court. Plain chronological narrative. Write this so a reader who has never heard of the case can follow.
3. Question presented
The specific legal question the court was asked to decide. Phrased as a single sentence, usually starting "Whether..."
4. Holding
What the court decided. The vote count (e.g., 9-0, 5-4) and the author of the majority opinion. This is the part that binds lower courts.
5. Reasoning
Why the court decided what it did. This is usually the longest section. Walk through the majority's argument, citing specific passages by page where useful. If there are important concurrences, note them.
6. Dissent
If any. A dissent is sometimes more influential than the majority opinion (Harlan's dissent in Plessy was vindicated by Brown sixty years later). Include if the dissent is substantive, skip if it's mechanical.
7. Significance and later citations
Why the case still matters. What later decisions have relied on it, limited it, or expanded it. Where it sits in the broader constitutional arc. Be precise about what the case does and does not stand for — a common misuse of citations is to invoke a case for a proposition it didn't actually establish.
Style
Plain prose. No footnotes — cite inline ("as the Court wrote at 165"). Quote the actual opinion where the language is the point; paraphrase where it isn't. Skip citation-puffery: we are aiming at readers who want to learn, not to be impressed.
Technical terms that appear in the brief should either be defined inline on first use or linked to glossary.md.
Every brief ends with a Sources block listing the primary source (court opinion) with a permalink (Justia, Oyez, or official US Reports PDF on SupremeCourt.gov). That entry also goes into sources/citation_index.md.
What counts as a "landmark"
A landmark case is one that: (a) announced a significant constitutional or statutory rule, (b) has been repeatedly cited in later decisions, and (c) is impossible to understand American civic practice without. Not every important case is a landmark — many are important but narrow. The library is for the landmarks.
Current briefs
- Marbury v. Madison (1803) — judicial review
- McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) — implied powers, state taxation of federal instrumentalities
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954) — equal protection
- Cooper v. Aaron (1958) — constitutional supremacy + state resistance
- Miranda v. Arizona (1966) — Fifth Amendment + custodial interrogation
- Arizona v. United States (2012) — federal preemption of state immigration enforcement
Queued
See ../index.md for the full queue.