Briefing #01: Understanding Case Law & Law Reports

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In college, one of the most recurring tasks asked of me was to back any arguments/findings with case law, even if just merely stating the name.

Judging from the media (which is probably mostly inaccurate), this is going to be required of me a lot during my legal career.

However, in college, they only ever gave us the summarised case information, which made researching my own case law particularly difficult.

So for my first personal legal research task, I am going to learn to read basic case citations, understand the structure of a law report and hopefully summarise a landmark UK case.

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Legal Terminology & Case Citations

I felt that it was only right to begin with understanding basic legal terminology. I wanted to really understand what case law is and not just rely on what I thought it was.

Term/Citation	Definition found online	My Understanding
Case Law	Law which is made by the courts and decided by judges. Source	Unlike legislation/statute, which is created by Parliament, Case Laws are laws created by the courts (judges) without the need to pass the law through Parliament (House of Commons & Lords)
Stare Decisis	Means “to stand by decisions”. This principle means that a court must follow and apply the law as set out in the decisions of higher courts in previous cases Source	A legal principle which states that courts must follow any decisions made in previous cases(unless there are sufficient grounds not to do so)
Neutral Citation	Neutral citations were introduced in the UK in 2001 for judgments from all divisions of the High Court and are independent of any printed series of law reports. For example: Brown v Davies [2006] EWCA Civ 166 [9]. Brown and Davies are the parties involved [2006] is the date of the judgment EWCA Civ is the court in which the case was heard; in this case, the Court of Appeal England and Wales, Civil Division 166 is the case number [9] refers to paragraph number 9. Source 1 Source 2	Citations that have not been published in any report/media It allows people to find judgments easily. The structure of the citation is: Party Names, [Year of Judgment], Court Abbreviation, Case/Ref number

The were a couple of other legal terms I found, but I don't want to overwhelm myself (or you), so I'm sticking to these for now.

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Anatomy of a Law Report

When skimming through a law report, I get very quickly overwhelmed and bored. It just seems like a whole lot of writing, most of which isn't relevant. I often try my hardest not to have to read the report.

But I want to be a skilled and competent lawyer, so I spent some time understanding the structure of a law report.

Typical sections found in a law report include:

• Case Header - includes parties involved, date of the hearing, the court, and judges who presided over the case

• Catchwords - a list of keywords and a summary of legal issues found in the case. This helps with finding and organising the case

• Headnote - A summary of the case, including the background of the case, the facts, any previous court decision being appealed against, and any arguments being relied on

• Blocklist - cases, legislation and textbooks relied on

• Judgment - The judge's reasoning and decision

I tried to label said sections on a number of law reports I found; however, I found this particularly difficult. It seems each report is slightly different in structure. The case header and catchwords are simple enough to find. However, particularly with older reports, I struggle to know where the headnote starts; sometimes the summary is so large that I believe it is not truly the headnote.

I guess the structure of a law report might not really matter at the end of the day, but I want to at least understand the point of each section; otherwise, the law report becomes too daunting and heavy.

Reddit users state that this is a skill that will only improve over time and with practice (which requires patience, something which I find myself lacking).

To avoid going into a huge rabbit hole and getting frustrated with myself, I decided to move on to the main task - summarising a case.

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Writing a Case Summary

The case I chose to summarise was: Re A (Children) [2000] EWCA Civ 254

I chose this case because the legal issue was particularly interesting to me; I find cases that contain moral and ethical issues the most impactful, perhaps because they show the depth that law has, regardless of how much people try to separate law and morals.

The case report I found was 131 pages long, and I quickly learnt that there was no use reading all of it. I used the index to find the sections that were particularly relevant to me, although a huge worry was that I was not skilled enough in selecting the right sections, and so I may miss crucial information.

Case Facts

Finding the case facts was quite easy, headings were clear, and the writing was not too difficult to understand (although I had to Google some words like 'arduous' and 'eered')

Issue

The issue of the case was pretty straightforward, although I don't feel confident that I included all the relevant issues. Am I supposed to highlight specific statutes/legal arguments?

Decision

The hardest part for me was the decision. I couldn't tell what the official decision was and what were simply points the courts felt were worth mentioning.

Significance

Additionally, realising the significance and impact of the case was not as easy as I thought it would be; next time, I think it would be beneficial to highlight the impact of the case in multiple areas of law, e.g medical law, family law, etc.

P.S. I cheated and took some notes from other case summaries online. As this is my first time, I will give myself some grace and do better next time

If you want to read my case summary and provide feedback, click below:

Re A (Children) [2000] EWCA Civ 254

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Key Takeaways

• Law reports and case law are tools which will be heavily relied upon in my future legal career. It will help aid my arguments, understand how decisions affect the public, and create critical arguments

• You don't need to read the entire report - some sections won't be useful to me. Not reading the whole thing doesn't mean I'm lazy or incompetent; it just means I'm working more efficiently

• Use a dictionary - while reading reports, I regularly came across words I didn't understand. At first, I tried to ignore the words, but soon realised that the word was used for a reason. Checking the definitions of words helped me understand the text better. (I know it's obvious, but for some delusional reason, I really did try to read reports without understanding the text)

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-B.L

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Resources I Found

Description	Link
Check what different abbreviations mean	Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations
Find British/Irish case law, legislation, EU case law, etc	British and Irish Legal Information Institute

Websites I Used

• Law Reports | Faculty of Law

• Anatomy of a law report - ICLR

• ICLR's Law Reports: An Explainer - ICLR

• Introduction - Case Law: How to find and use case law - LibGuides at University of Strathclyde

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