Description
Instructions
Briefing a case is the activity of summarizing a court opinion. A paralegal’s job revolves around writing. A paralegal will draft numerous documents including correspondence with clients and other attorneys, memoranda, discovery requests, and legal pleadings. Most of the paralegal’s written documents will incorporate the law. A paralegal must have the ability to read the law and apply the law to the facts of the present case. A paralegal must have the ability to analyze the law.
In this assignment, you will read a US Supreme Court case and write an accurate essay about it. This will help you do the analysis you may later need to write a case brief; it gets you used to understanding a case without worrying about the specific case brief format.
You should find a Supreme Court case related to the subject matter of this class. Use Nexis Uni via the APUS Library or look up cases on Oyez. If you need help picking a case, let me know.
Your essay should include the following information: Who were the parties? What happened that led to this case? What lower courts heard the case and what did they decide? What did the Supreme Court decide and what was its reasoning? What cases did the Supreme Court use to help it with its decision? Did any Supreme Court Justices dissent? If so, what did they have to say? What was the end result of the case? Has the case had impact on society or do you think it will in the future?
Your paper should be 1-2 pages long. Points will be deducted for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. Please proofread your work; most errors are easily corrected by proofreading. When citing legal cases, the case names should be done in standard Bluebook format. Example: York v. Smith, 65 U.S. 294 (1995). For further information, see Introduction to Basic Legal Citation and look under the “How to Cite” section.
Also, remember that Bluebook requires footnotes for essays; it does not use in-text citations. I have attached a sheet about footnotes to help you, but please ask if you don’t understand!
OOTNOTES. Every time you quote a work by another author, or use the ideas of another author, including the person who wrote the opinion in the case you are looking at, you must credit the source with a footnote. A footnote is indicated in the text of your paper by a small Arabic numeral (1, 2, etc) written in superscriptthis is superscript. Each new footnote gets a new number (numbered sequentially); do not repeat a footnote number you’ve already used, even if the earlier reference is to the same work. Bluebook uses what we call “short forms” for repeated sources. The number refers to a note number at the bottom of the page. This note contains the citation information for the material you are referencing. The notes need to be in bluebook format. A great website for bluebook format is: https://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/ Here’s the Cornell info on short forms: https://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/6-500 Here is a quick example of what a footnote looks like. Recently I read a case where the US Supreme Court overruled the highest state court in Massachusetts on whether ownership of a stun gun is protected by the 2nd amendment. 1 In order to insert this footnote, in the version of Word I am using I clicked on Insert, then scrolled down to Footnote. Here I can select whether the note is a footnote or endnote, what kind of numbers it uses, etc. Even if I keep writing and I end up on the next page, the note will stay at the bottom of the page where it is referenced in the text. This is why it’s SO much easier to use the footnote function – if you try to insert the notes yourself, then you edit your paper and the notes move around, you may spend a lot of time adjusting the text.2 Note that footnotes are the SAME FONT as the text of your paper. If you ever find yourself writing a law review article, you will very carefully need to format your footnotes. For most of your classes here, using the Bluebook and other citation websites will be sufficient. If you have any questions, contact your instructor!
