case-brief
Case brief
A case brief is a law student's one-page map of a judicial opinion. It pulls out what happened, how the case got to this court, the precise legal question, the answer, why the court answered that way, and the rule the case stands for. Briefing forces the student to read an opinion actively, and the brief is what they glance at when called on in class and what they later fold into a course outline.
The hard parts are the ones a casebook does not label: separating the facts that mattered to the decision from the background, stating the issue narrowly enough to be useful, and telling the holding apart from dicta. This skill does those carefully and keeps the student's own reading in charge. It describes what a court said, never how the law applies to anyone's real situation.