Submit a student brief of Pierce v. Ortho, which can be found at https://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/supreme-court/1980/84-n-j-58-0.html

Student brief

A student brief is a short summary and analysis of the case prepared for use in classroom discussion. It is a set of notes, presented in a systematic way, in order to sort out the parties, identify the issues, ascertain what was decided, and analyze the reasoning behind decisions made by the courts.

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The parties and how to keep track of them

Beginning students often have difficulty identifying relationships between the parties involved in court cases. The following definitions may help:

Plaintiffs sue defendants in civil suits in trial courts. Parties that file appeals/wrts are usually called Appellants or Petitioners, which parties that respond to the appeals/writs are called Appellees, or Respondents. These are general terms and not meant to confuse you, but please read below for the slight nuances in the terms.

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The losing party in a civil action may ask a higher (appellate) court to review the case on the ground that the trial court judge made a mistake. If the law gives the loser the right to a higher court review, his or her lawyers will appeal. If the loser does not have this right, his or her lawyers may ask the court for a writ of certiorari. Under this procedure, the appellate court is being asked to exercise its lawful discretion in granting the cases a hearing for review.

For example, a defendant losing a case in a federal district court has the right to appeal this decision in the Court of Appeals of the circuit and this court cannot refuse to hear it. The party losing in this appellate court can request that the case be reviewed by the Supreme Court, but, unless certain special circumstances apply, has no right to a hearing, unless the party submits awrit of certiorari and the Supreme Court grants said writ of certiorari.

These two procedures, appeals and petitions for certiorari, are sometimes loosely grouped together as "appeals." However, there is, as shown, a difference between them, and you should know it.

A person who seeks a writ of certiorari, that is, a ruling by a higher court that it hear the case, is known as a petitioner. The person who must respond to the petition, that is, the winner in the lower court, is called the respondent.

A person who files a formal appeal demanding appellate review as a matter of right is known as the appellant. His or her opponent is the appellee.

The name of the party initiating the action in court, at any level on the judicial ladder, always appears first in the legal papers. For example, Arlo Tatum and others sued in Federal District Court for an injunction against Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and others to stop the Army from spying on them. Tatum and his friends became plaintiffs and the case was then known as Tatum v. Laird. The Tatum group lost in the District Court and appealed to the Court of Appeals, where they were referred to as the appellants, and the defendants became the appellees. Thus the case was still known at Tatum v. Laird.

When Tatum and his fellow appellants won in the Court of Appeals, Laird and his fellow appellees decided to seek review by the Supreme Court. They successfully petitioned for a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court directing the Court of Appeals to send up the record of the case (trial court transcript, motion papers, and assorted legal documents) to the Supreme Court.

At this point the name of the case changed to Laird v. Tatum: Laird and associates were now the petitioners, and Tatum and his fellows were the respondents. Several church groups and a group of former intelligence agents obtained permission to file briefs (written arguments) on behalf of the respondents to help persuade the Court to arrive at a decision favorable to them. Each of these groups was termed an amicus curiae, or "friend of the court."

****************************************************Student brief Structure

These can be extensive or short, depending on the depth of analysis required and the demands of the instructor. A comprehensive brief includes the following elements:

1. Title and Citation

Make sure you write the full citation as set forth in the case. For example the U.S. Supreme Court is usually cited as follows (example), "Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967)"; The NJ Supreme Court, likewise is cited usually, as follows (example), "Tarr v. Ciasulli, 181 N.J. 70 (2004)." The title of the case shows who is opposing whom. The name of the person who initiated legal action in that particular court will always appear first. Since the losers often appeal to a higher court, this can get confusing. The first section of this guide shows you how to identify the players without a scorecard.

The citation tells how to locate the reporter of the case in the appropriate case reporter. If in the future, you do not know how to cite a certain court, google it - there are plenty of online sources.

2. Facts of the Case

A good student brief will include a summary of the pertinent facts and legal points raised in the case. It will show the nature of the litigation, who sued whom, based on what occurrences, and what happened in the lower court/s.

The facts are often conveniently summarized at the beginning of the court's published opinion. Sometimes, the best statement of the facts will be found in a dissenting or concurring opinion. WARNING! Judges are not above being selective about the facts they emphasize. This can become of crucial importance when you try to reconcile apparently inconsistent cases, because the way a judge chooses to characterize and "edit" the facts often determines which way he or she will vote and, as a result, which rule of law will be applied.

The fact section of a good student brief will include the following elements:

• • • • • • A one or two-sentence description of the nature of the case, to serve as an introduction.
          • A statement of the relevant law, which allows us to draw attention to the key issue/s that are in dispute. This may take you a couple of sentences
          • A summary of the relevant facts to explain who did what to whom. Be precise as to what was alleged by one arty against another.
          • A summary of actions taken by the lower courts, for example: "Plaintiff's case dismissed; Plaintiff appealed; The trial court's decision was affirmed by appellate court; Supreme Court granted certiorari; Supreme Court reversed appellate court's decision and remanded for a new trial."

3. Issues

The issues or questions of law raised by the facts peculiar to the case are often stated explicitly by the court.

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With rare exceptions, the outcome of an appellate case will turn on the meaning of a provision of the Constitution, a law, or a judicial doctrine/theory. Capture that provision or debated point in your restatement of the issue.

When noting issues, it may help to phrase them in terms of questions that can be answered with a precise "yes" or "no." An acceptable means of framing issues would be as follows: "The NJ Supreme Court in John Doe v. Saul Goodman,decided the issue of: "Are all employees in NJ that merely sign applications and begin work without contracts or union protections at will-employees?" The NJ Supreme Court answered in the affirmative, stating that employees that have received no written, oral, or implied representations of just-case employment are at-will employees.

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NOTE: Many students misread cases because they fail to see the issues in terms of the applicable law or judicial doctrine than for any other reason. There is no substitute for taking the time to frame carefully the questions, so that they actually incorporate the key provisions of the law in terms capable of being given precise answers. When reading, it may also help to label the issues if there are more than one.

4. Decisions

The decision, or holding, is the court's answer to a question presented to it for answer by the parties involved or raised by the court itself in its own reading of the case. There are narrow procedural holdings, for example, "case reversed and remanded," broader substantive holdings which deal with the interpretation of the Constitution, statutes, or judicial doctrines. If the issues have been drawn precisely, the holdings can be stated in simple "yes" or "no" answers or in short statements taken from the language used by the court.

5. Reasoning

The reasoning, or rationale, is the chain of argument which led the judges in either a majority or a dissenting opinion to rule as they did. This should be outlined in a paragraph

6. Separate Opinions

For our purposes, the focus should be on the majority opinion only. This does not mean that you will not be responsible for understanding the dissenting or concurring opinions in the future. For those dissenting/concurring opinions, a few sentences stating why the dissenting/concurring judges disagreed (dissent) or concurred (agreed with the outcome but not for the same reasons set forth by the majority).

7. Analysis

Here the student should evaluate the significance of the case and its impact on future litigants, government, or society.

A cautionary note

Don't brief the case until you have read it through at least once. Don't think that because you have found the judge's best purple prose you have necessarily extracted the essence of the decision. Look for unarticulated premises, logical fallacies, manipulation of the factual record, or distortions of precedent. Then ask, How does this case relate to other cases in the same general area of law? What does it show about judicial policymaking? Does the result violate your sense of justice or fairness? How might it have been better decided?