Step 1: Find information about the judgement in a revision guide or textbook
The first thing you can do instead of directly picking up the court report is to try to get information about the judgement from some other sources that explain it in an easier language. For example, many revision notes and guides discuss law reports using simple language, so you have a better chance of understanding what the judgement is about. Those types of resources will give you the information you need to grasp what the court report is about even before actually studying it. Once you have an understanding of the key issues in the decision, you will find it much easier to dig into the actual court report.
Step 2: Understand the facts of the judgement well
Once you start studying the court report, focus first on making sure that you understand the facts of the judgement very well. These are usually at the beginning of the court report. Typically, court reports contain plenty of details about what happened to both parties. This can be quite overwhelming, and it might tempt you to skip through to the judgement. But if you try to read the arguments put forward by both sides or the judges' decisions without having a good understanding of the facts, you will likely get even more confused.
While scanning through the facts of the judgement, try to tease out the most important information. You should write 2-3 sentences explaining what happened in the judgement. If after the first 2-3 sentences you still feel like you want to keep writing, then you haven't done a good enough job of teasing out the most important information. Of course, if you followed Step 1, you will likely have studied the key facts of the judgement in a revision guide or textbook, and your job now will be that much easier. All that you will have to do now is supplement the information in the revision guide or textbook with a few more details.
Things you need to focus on include:
- Who are the parties in the judgement?
- What actually happened to them, from the perspective of each party?
- Which party is being sued/prosecuted?
- Which party is suing/prosecuting?
Step 3: Identify the arguments of both parties
Once you know who the parties are and what their dispute is against each other, it is time to review their legal arguments. You have to keep in mind that not every argument is a legal argument. There are many things that make sense from a logical and rational point of view, but you cannot present them in court because they don't have any weight in the eyes of the law. So, focus on identifying what legal questions the parties are posing.
When studying the arguments put forward by both parties, your job is to try to evaluate them. In order to do that, first you need to understand well the legal arguments presented by both parties. Then, it is time to look at the arguments more strategically and analyse their strengths and weaknesses. In order to do that, try to think about the arguments as if you were a judge. Here are some questions that a judge would ask themselves:
- Which argument seems stronger than the others? Why?
- Which argument seems weaker than the others? Why?
- Does it feel like the party could have made a better argument?
- Overall, which party had stronger arguments?
- Overall, which party had weaker arguments?
- Are the counter-arguments made by both parties reasonable?
If you notice any weaknesses or flaws, note them down and discuss them later on with other law students or your lecturer. In the end, you should be able to understand how the suing party is arguing their position and how the defending party is attempting to counter or weaken those arguments with their own.
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Step 4: Find the decision in the court report
The decision in a judgement is the ultimate, conclusive judgement made by the court in a particular court case. You can typically find it at the end of the court report. It is relatively easy to figure out what the decision is where there is only one judge who made it. But where there is a panel of judges, things can get quite complicated. For example, the judgements made by some of the judges might actually be against the final decision. When this happens, the judge who disagrees is in the minority. However, their disagreement must still be acknowledged within the judgement, because it might be helpful to the parties in some other dispute in the future.
Minority judgements cannot become a ratio decidendi of the decision, but they can definitely be persuasive in future disputes. Moreover, different judges have different ways of evaluating arguments and evidence. This is why they may reach different conclusions despite everything else being the same. But the final decision will always follow majority of the judgements which agree with each other. Understanding this will definitely help you get better at analysing court reports.
Step 5: Skim through the judgements
The actual "judgement" in the court report is the part where the judges provide their decision. Many students, in their attempt to be thorough, try to study the entire judgement provided in the court report. More often than not, judgements contain a lot of information that is purely technical or include ancillary notes by the judge that are not that relevant to the final decision. These things can distract and even confuse you while you are trying to make sense of everything and connect the dots.
Instead of attempting to study the whole judgement, just skim through it first and highlight the parts that seem to be relevant to the decision. Then, only read those specific parts. As you already know the facts and circumstances of the judgement as well as the arguments made by both the parties from the revision guide or a textbook, it will be easier for you to develop a thorough enough understanding of the judgement by studying in detail only the highlighted parts of it.
Final word
Court reports intimidate many law students, primarily due to the legal jargon and technical language used in the reports. By adopting this smart strategy, you can overcome that challenge and ensure that you understand all the facts, parties, arguments, and judgements of the decision. If you are passionate about law, studying court reports can be quite enjoyable as well as a great learning experience. You just need to make sure you do it the easy way!