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Legal Research: A Guide to Case Law

Introduction.

• Federal Court Decisions
• State Court Decisions
• Decisions by Topic (Digests)
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Authors: Emily Carr, Senior Legal Reference Librarian, Law Library of Congress

Elizabeth Osborne, Senior Legal Reference Librarian, Law Library of Congress

Editors: Barbara Bavis, Bibliographic and Research Instruction Librarian, Law Library of Congress

Anna Price, Legal Reference Librarian, Law Library of Congress

Note: This guide is adapted from a research guide originally published on the Law Library's website .

Created: September 9, 2019

Last Updated: February 1, 2023

Each branch of government produces a different type of law. Case law is the body of law developed from judicial opinions or decisions over time (whereas statutory law comes from legislative bodies and administrative law comes from executive bodies). This guide introduces beginner legal researchers to resources for finding judicial decisions in case law resources. Coverage includes brief explanations of the court systems in the United States; federal and state case law reporters; basic Bluebook citation style for court decisions; digests; and online access to court decisions.

Court Systems and Decisions

The United States has parallel court systems, one at the federal level, and another at the state level. Both systems are divided into trial courts and appellate courts. Generally, trial courts determine the relevant facts of a dispute and apply law to these facts, while appellate courts review trial court decisions to ensure the law was applied correctly.

Stare Decisis (Precedent)

In Latin, stare decisis means "to stand by things decided." In the U.S. legal system, this Latin phrase represents the "doctrine of precedent, under which a court must follow earlier decisions when the same points arise again in litigation." ( Black's Law Dictionary , 11th ed.) Typically, a court will deviate from precedent only if there is a compelling reason. Under "vertical" stare decisis , the decisions of the highest court in a jurisdiction create mandatory precedent that must be followed by lower courts in that jurisdiction. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court creates binding precedent that all other federal courts must follow (and that all state courts must follow on questions of constitutional interpretation). Similarly, the highest court in a state creates mandatory precedent for the lower state courts below it. Intermediate appellate courts (such as the federal circuit courts of appeal) create mandatory precedent for the courts below them. A related concept is "horizontal" stare decisis , whereby a court applies its own prior decisions to similar facts before it in the future.

Case Law Reporters

Decisions are published in serial print publications called “reporters,” and are also published electronically. Reporters are discussed in greater detail under " Federal Court Decisions " and " State Court Decisions ." Information about how to cite decisions in a reporter is discussed under " Citations ."

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How to write a case brief for law school: Excerpt reproduced from Introduction to the Study of Law: Cases and Materials,

Third Edition (LexisNexis 2009) by Michael Makdisi & John Makdisi

C. HOW TO BRIEF

The previous section described the parts of a case in order to make it easier to read and identify the pertinent information that you will use to create your briefs. This section will describe the parts of a brief in order to give you an idea about what a brief is, what is helpful to include in a brief, and what purpose it serves. Case briefs are a necessary study aid in law school that helps to encapsulate and analyze the mountainous mass of material that law students must digest. The case brief represents a final product after reading a case, rereading it, taking it apart, and putting it back together again. In addition to its function as a tool for self-instruction and referencing, the case brief also provides a valuable “cheat sheet” for class participation.

Who will read your brief? Most professors will espouse the value of briefing but will never ask to see that you have, in fact, briefed. As a practicing lawyer, your client doesn’t care if you brief, so long as you win the case. The judges certainly don’t care if you brief, so long as you competently practice the law. You are the person that the brief will serve! Keep this in mind when deciding what elements to include as part of your brief and when deciding what information to include under those elements.

What are the elements of a brief? Different people will tell you to include different things in your brief. Most likely, upon entering law school, this will happen with one or more of your instructors. While opinions may vary, four elements that are essential to any useful brief are the following:

(a) Facts (name of the case and its parties, what happened factually and procedurally, and the judgment)

(b) Issues (what is in dispute)

(c) Holding (the applied rule of law)

(d) Rationale (reasons for the holding)

If you include nothing but these four elements, you should have everything you need in order to recall effectively the information from the case during class or several months later when studying for exams.

Because briefs are made for yourself, you may want to include other elements that expand the four elements listed above. Depending on the case, the inclusion of additional elements may be useful. For example, a case that has a long and important section expounding dicta might call for a separate section in your brief labeled: Dicta. Whatever elements you decide to include, however, remember that the brief is a tool intended for personal use. To the extent that more elements will help with organization and use of the brief, include them. On the other hand, if you find that having more elements makes your brief cumbersome and hard to use, cut back on the number of elements. At a minimum, however, make sure you include the four elements listed above.

Elements that you may want to consider including in addition to the four basic elements are:

(e) Dicta (commentary about the decision that was not the basis for the decision)

(f) Dissent (if a valuable dissenting opinion exits, the dissent’s opinion)

(g) Party’s Arguments (each party’s opposing argument concerning the ultimate issue)

(h) Comments (personal commentary)

Personal comments can be useful if you have a thought that does not fit elsewhere. In the personal experience of one of the authors, this element was used to label cases as specific kinds (e.g., as a case of vicarious liability) or make mental notes about what he found peculiar or puzzling about cases. This element allowed him to release his thoughts (without losing them) so that he could move on to other cases.

In addition to these elements, it may help you to organize your thoughts, as some people do, by dividing Facts into separate elements:

(1) Facts of the case (what actually happened, the controversy)

(2) Procedural History (what events within the court system led to the present case)

(3) Judgment (what the court actually decided)

Procedural History is usually minimal and most of the time irrelevant to the ultimate importance of a case; however, this is not always true. One subject in which Procedure History is virtually always relevant is Civil Procedure.

When describing the Judgment of the case, distinguish it from the Holding. The Judgment is the factual determination by the court, in favor of one party, such as “affirmed,” “reversed,” or “remanded.” In contrast, the Holding is the applied rule of law that serves as the basis for the ultimate judgment.

Remember that the purpose of a brief is to remind you of the important details that make the case significant in terms of the law. It will be a reference tool when you are drilled by a professor and will be a study aid when you prepare for exams. A brief is also like a puzzle piece.

The elements of the brief create the unique shape and colors of the piece, and, when combined with other pieces, the picture of the common law takes form. A well-constructed brief will save you lots of time by removing the need to return to the case to remember the important details and also by making it easier to put together the pieces of the common law puzzle.

D. EXTRACTING THE RELEVANT INFORMATION: ANNOTATING AND HIGHLIGHTING

So now that you know the basic elements of a brief, what information is important to include under each element? The simple answer is: whatever is relevant. But what parts of a case are relevant? When you read your first few cases, you may think that everything that the judge said was relevant to his ultimate conclusion. Even if this were true, what is relevant for the judge to make his decision is not always relevant for you to include in your brief. Remember, the reason to make a brief is not to persuade the world that the ultimate decision in the case is a sound one, but rather to aid in refreshing your memory concerning the most important parts of the case.

What facts are relevant to include in a brief? You should include the facts that are necessary to remind you of the story. If you forget the story, you will not remember how the law in the case was applied. You should also include the facts that are dispositive to the decision in the case. For instance, if the fact that a car is white is a determining factor in the case, the brief should note that the case involves a white car and not simply a car. To the extent that the procedural history either helps you to remember the case or plays an important role in the ultimate outcome, you should include these facts as well.

What issues and conclusions are relevant to include in a brief? There is usually one main issue on which the court rests its decision. This may seem simple, but the court may talk about multiple issues, and may discuss multiple arguments from both sides of the case. Be sure to distinguish the issues from the arguments made by the parties. The relevant issue or issues, and corresponding conclusions, are the ones for which the court made a final decision and which are binding. The court may discuss intermediate conclusions or issues, but stay focused on the main issue and conclusion which binds future courts.

What rationale is important to include in a brief? This is probably the most difficult aspect of the case to determine. Remember that everything that is discussed may have been relevant to the judge, but it is not necessarily relevant to the rationale of the decision. The goal is to remind yourself of the basic reasoning that the court used to come to its decision and the key factors that made the decision favor one side or the other.

A brief should be brief! Overly long or cumbersome briefs are not very helpful because you will not be able to skim them easily when you review your notes or when the professor drills you. On the other hand, a brief that is too short will be equally unhelpful because it lacks sufficient information to refresh your memory. Try to keep your briefs to one page in length. This will make it easy for you to organize and reference them.

Do not get discouraged. Learning to brief and figuring out exactly what to include will take time and practice. The more you brief, the easier it will become to extract the relevant information.

While a brief is an extremely helpful and important study aid, annotating and highlighting are other tools for breaking down the mass of material in your casebook. The remainder of this section will discuss these different techniques and show how they complement and enhance the briefing process.

Annotating Cases

Many of you probably already read with a pencil or pen, but if you do not, now is the time to get in the habit. Cases are so dense and full of information that you will find yourself spending considerable amounts of time rereading cases to find what you need. An effective way to reduce this time is to annotate the margins of the casebook. Your pencil (or pen) will be one of your best friends while reading a case. It will allow you to mark off the different sections (such as facts, procedural history, or conclusions), thus allowing you to clear your mind of thoughts and providing an invaluable resource when briefing and reviewing.

You might be wondering why annotating is important if you make an adequate, well-constructed brief. By their very nature briefs cannot cover everything in a case. Even with a thorough, well-constructed brief you may want to reference the original case in order to reread dicta that might not have seemed important at the time, to review the complete procedural history or set of facts, or to scour the rationale for a better understanding of the case; annotating makes these tasks easier. Whether you return to a case after a few hours or a few months, annotations will swiftly guide you to the pertinent parts of the case by providing a roadmap of the important sections. Your textual markings and margin notes will refresh your memory and restore specific thoughts you might have had about either the case in general or an individual passage.

Annotations will also remind you of forgotten thoughts and random ideas by providing a medium for personal comments.

In addition to making it easier to review an original case, annotating cases during the first review of a case makes the briefing process easier. With adequate annotations, the important details needed for your brief will be much easier to retrieve. Without annotations, you will likely have difficulty locating the information you seek even in the short cases. It might seem strange that it would be hard to reference a short case, but even a short case will likely take you at least fifteen to twenty-five minutes to read, while longer cases may take as much as thirty minutes to an hour to complete. No matter how long it takes, the dense material of all cases makes it difficult to remember all your thoughts, and trying to locate specific sections of the analysis may feel like you are trying to locate a needle in a haystack. An annotation in the margin, however, will not only swiftly guide you to a pertinent section, but will also refresh the thoughts that you had while reading that section.

When you read a case for the first time, read for the story and for a basic understanding of the dispute, the issues, the rationale, and the decision. As you hit these elements (or what you think are these elements) make a mark in the margins. Your markings can be as simple as “facts” (with a bracket that indicates the relevant part of the paragraph). When you spot an issue, you may simply mark “issue” or instead provide a synopsis in your own words. When a case sparks an idea — write that idea in the margin as well — you never know when a seemingly irrelevant idea might turn into something more.

Finally, when you spot a particularly important part of the text, underline it (or highlight it as described below).

With a basic understanding of the case, and with annotations in the margin, the second read-through of the case should be much easier. You can direct your reading to the most important sections and will have an easier time identifying what is and is not important. Continue rereading the case until you have identified all the relevant information that you need to make your brief, including the issue(s), the facts, the holding, and the relevant parts of the analysis.

Pencil or pen — which is better to use when annotating? Our recommendation is a mechanical pencil. Mechanical pencils make finer markings than regular pencils, and also than ballpoint pens. Although you might think a pencil might smear more than a pen, with its sharp point a mechanical pencil uses very little excess lead and will not smear as much as you might imagine. A mechanical pencil will also give you the freedom to make mistakes without consequences. When you first start annotating, you may think that some passages are more important than they really are, and therefore you may resist the urge to make a mark in order to preserve your book and prevent false guideposts. With a pencil, however, the ability to erase and rewrite removes this problem.

Highlighting

Why highlight? Like annotating, highlighting may seem unimportant if you create thorough, well-constructed briefs, but highlighting directly helps you to brief. It makes cases, especially the more complicated ones, easy to digest, review and use to extract information.

Highlighting takes advantage of colors to provide a uniquely effective method for reviewing and referencing a case. If you prefer a visual approach to learning, you may find highlighting to be a very effective tool.

If annotating and highlighting are so effective, why brief? Because the process of summarizing a case and putting it into your own words within a brief provides an understanding of the law and of the case that you cannot gain through the process of highlighting or annotating.

The process of putting the case into your own words forces you to digest the material, while annotating and highlighting can be accomplished in a much more passive manner.

What should you highlight? Similar to annotating, the best parts of the case to highlight are those that represent the needed information for your brief such as the facts, the issue, the holding and the rationale.

Unlike annotating, highlighting provides an effective way to color code, which makes referring to the case even easier. In addition, Highlighters are particularly useful in marking off entire sections by using brackets. These brackets will allow you to color-code the case without highlighting all the text, leaving the most important phrases untouched for a more detailed highlight marking or underlining.

Highlighting is a personal tool, and therefore should be used to the extent that highlighting helps, but should be modified in a way that makes it personally time efficient and beneficial. For instance, you might combine the use of annotations in the margins with the visual benefit of highlighting the relevant text. You may prefer to underline the relevant text with a pencil, but to use a highlighter to bracket off the different sections of a case. Whatever you choose to do, make sure that it works for you, regardless of what others recommend. The techniques in the remainder of this section will describe ways to make full use of your highlighters.

First, buy yourself a set of multi-colored highlighters, with at least four, or perhaps five or six different colors. Yellow, pink, and orange are usually the brightest. Depending on the brand, purple and green can be dark, but still work well. Although blue is a beautiful color, it tends to darken and hide the text.

Therefore we recommend that you save blue for the elements that you rarely highlight.

For each different section of the case, choose a color, and use that color only when highlighting the section of the case designated for that color. Consider using yellow for the text that you tend to highlight most frequently. Because yellow is the brightest, you may be inclined to use yellow for the Conclusions in order to make them stand out the most. If you do this, however, you will exhaust your other colors much faster than yellow and this will require that you purchase an entire set of new highlighters when a single color runs out because colors such as green are not sold separately. If instead you choose to use yellow on a more frequently highlighted section such as the Analysis, when it comes time to replace your yellow marker, you will need only to replace your yellow highlighter individually. In the personal experience on one of the authors, the sections of cases that seemed to demand the most highlighter attention were the

Facts and the Analysis, while the Issues and Holdings demanded the least. Other Considerations and

Procedural History required lots of highlighting in particular cases although not in every case.

Experiment if you must, but try to choose a color scheme early on in the semester and stick with it. That way, when you come back to the first cases of the semester, you will not be confused with multiple color schemes. The basic sections of a case for which you should consider giving a different color are:

(b) Procedural History

(c) Issue (and questions presented)

(d) Holding (and conclusions)

(e) Analysis (rationale)

(f) Other Considerations (such as dicta)

Not all of these sections demand a separate color. You may find that combining Facts and Procedural History or Issues and Holdings works best. Furthermore, as mentioned above, some sections may not warrant highlighting in every case (e.g., dicta probably do not need to be highlighted unless they are particularly important). If you decide that a single color is all that you need, then stick to one, but if you find yourself highlighting lots of text from many different sections, reconsider the use of at least a few different colors. Highlighters make text stand out, but only when used appropriately. The use of many colors enables you to highlight more text without reducing the highlighter’s effectiveness. Three to four colors provides decent color variation without the cumbersomeness of handling too many markers.

Once you are comfortable with your color scheme, determining exactly what to highlight still may be difficult. Similar to knowing what to annotate, experience will perfect your highlighting skills. Be careful not to highlight everything, thus ruining your highlighters’ effectiveness; at the same time, do not be afraid to make mistakes.

Now that we have covered the basics of reading, annotating, highlighting, and briefing a case, you are ready to start practicing. Keep the tips and techniques mentioned in this chapter in mind when you tackle the four topics in the remainder of this book. If you have difficultly, refer back to this chapter to help guide you as you master the case method of study and the art of using the common law.

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The Case Study Teaching Method

It is easy to get confused between the case study method and the case method , particularly as it applies to legal education. The case method in legal education was invented by Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895. Langdell conceived of a way to systematize and simplify legal education by focusing on previous case law that furthered principles or doctrines. To that end, Langdell wrote the first casebook, entitled A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts , a collection of settled cases that would illuminate the current state of contract law. Students read the cases and came prepared to analyze them during Socratic question-and-answer sessions in class.

The Harvard Business School case study approach grew out of the Langdellian method. But instead of using established case law, business professors chose real-life examples from the business world to highlight and analyze business principles. HBS-style case studies typically consist of a short narrative (less than 25 pages), told from the point of view of a manager or business leader embroiled in a dilemma. Case studies provide readers with an overview of the main issue; background on the institution, industry, and individuals involved; and the events that led to the problem or decision at hand. Cases are based on interviews or public sources; sometimes, case studies are disguised versions of actual events or composites based on the faculty authors’ experience and knowledge of the subject. Cases are used to illustrate a particular set of learning objectives; as in real life, rarely are there precise answers to the dilemma at hand.

Our suite of free materials offers a great introduction to the case study method. We also offer review copies of our products free of charge to educators and staff at degree-granting institutions.

For more information on the case study teaching method, see:

• Martha Minow and Todd Rakoff: A Case for Another Case Method
• HLS Case Studies Blog: Legal Education’s 9 Big Ideas
• Teaching Units: Problem Solving , Advanced Problem Solving , Skills , Decision Making and Leadership , Professional Development for Law Firms , Professional Development for In-House Counsel
• Educator Community: Tips for Teachers

Watch this informative video about the Problem-Solving Workshop:

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Between 9:00 PM EST on Saturday, May 29th and 9:00 PM EST on Sunday, May 30th users will not be able to access resources through the Law Library’s Catalog, the Law Library’s Database List, the Law Library’s Frequently Used Databases List, or the Law Library’s Research Guides. Users can still access databases that require an individual user account (ex. Westlaw, LexisNexis, and Bloomberg Law), or databases listed on the Main Library’s A-Z Database List.

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Case Law Research Guide

Introduction.

• Print Case Reporters
• Online Resources for Cases
• Finding Cases: Digests, Headnotes, and Key Numbers
• Finding Cases: Terms & Connectors Searching

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Every law student and practicing attorney must be able to find, read, analyze, and interpret case law. Under the common law principles of stare decisis, a court must follow the decisions in previous cases on the same legal topic. Therefore, finding cases is essential to finding out what the law is on a particular issue.

This guide will show you how to read a case citation and will set out the sources, both print and online, for finding cases. This guide also covers how to use digests, headnotes, and key numbers to find case law, as well as how to find cases through terms and connectors searching.

To find cases using secondary sources, such as legal encyclopedias or legal treatises, see our Secondary Sources Research Guide . For additional strategies to find cases, like using statutory annotations or citators, see our  Case Law Research Tutorial . Our tutorial also covers how to update cases using citators (Lexis’ Shepard’s tool and Westlaw’s KeyCite).

Basic Case Citation

A case citation is a reference to where a case (also called a  decision  or an  opinion  ) is printed in a book. The citation can also be used to retrieve cases from  Westlaw  and  Lexis . A case citation consists of a volume number, an abbreviation of the title of the book or other item, and a page number.  

The precise format of a case citation depends on a number of factors, including the jurisdiction, court, and type of case. You should review the rest of this section on citing cases (and the relevant rules in  The Bluebook ) before trying to format a case citation for the first time. See our Bluebook Guide for more information.

The basic format of a case citation is as follows:

Parallel Citations

When the same case is printed in different books, citations to more than one book may be given. These additional citations are known as  parallel citations .

Example: 265 U.S. 274, 68 L. Ed. 1016, 44 S. Ct. 565.

This means that the case you would find at page 565 of volume 44 of the  Supreme Court Reporter  (published by West) will be the same case you find on page 1016 of volume 68 of  Lawyers' Edition  (published by Lexis), and both will be the same as the opinion you find in the official government version,  United States Reports . Although the text of the opinion will be identical, the added editorial material will differ with each publisher.

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Definition of Case Law

What is case law.

In order to preserve a uniform enforcement of the laws, the legal system adheres to the doctrine of stare decisis , which is Latin for “stand by decided matters.”  This means that a court will be bound to rule in accordance with a previously made ruling on the same type of case. Precedent, or case law, is binding on courts of the same level or lower, and applies only if there is no legislative statute created, or higher court ruling, that overrules it.

Example of Case Law Application

Case law by jurisdiction.

Case law is specific to the jurisdiction in which it was rendered. For instance, a ruling in a California appellate court would not usually be used in deciding a case in Oklahoma. While there is no prohibition against referring to case law from a state other than the state in which the case is being heard, it holds little sway. Still, if there is no precedent in the home state, relevant case law from another state may be considered by the court.

Case Law Search

In addition, the Law Library of Congress offers a great deal of information on statutes, case law, and other legal issues. This includes a Guide to Law Online .

Dissecting Case Law Citations

In the United States, people are not required to hire an attorney to represent them in either civil or criminal matters. Laypeople navigating the legal system on their own can remember one rule of thumb when it comes to referring to case law or precedent in court documents: be as specific as possible, leading the court, not only to the case, but to the section and paragraph containing the pertinent information. The Cornell Law School website offers a variety of information on legal topics, including citation of case law, and even provides a video tutorial on case citation .

Case Law Example in Civil Lawsuit Against Child Services

The Roes accompanied the boy to his therapy sessions. When they were told of the boy’s past, they asked if their children were safe with him in their home. The therapist assured them that they had nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, that was not true. Just two months after being placed with the Roe family, the Roe’s son told his parents that the boy had molested him. The boy was arrested two days later, and admitted to having sexually molested the couple’s son several times.

Related Legal Terms and Issues

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Case study research.

Last update: April 07, 2022

A legal scholar who uses the term ‘case’ will probably first think of a legal case. From a socio-legal perspective, the understanding of this concept is, however, slightly different. Case study research is a methodology that is useful to study ‘how’ or ‘why’ questions in real-life.

Over the last forty years, researchers from sociology, anthropology and various other disciplines have developed the case study research methodology dramatically. This can be confusing for legal researchers. Luckily, both Webley and Argyrou have written an article on case study research specifically for legal researchers. Webley writes, for example, that this methodology allows us to know ‘how laws are understood, and how and why they are applied and misapplied, subverted, complied with or rejected’. Both authors rely upon the realist tradition of case study research as theorised by Yin. Yin defines the scope of a case study as: “An empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”.

Before you start collecting data for your case study, it is important to think about the theory and the concepts that you will want to use, as this will very much determine what your case will be about and will help you in the analysis of your data. You should then decide which methods of data collection and sources you will consult to generate a rich spectrum of data. Observations, legal guidelines, press articles… can be useful. Legal case study researchers usually also rely extensively on interviews. The meaning that interview participants give to their experiences with legal systems can uncover the influence of socio-economic factors on the law, legal processes and legal institutions.

Case studies strive for generalisable theories that go beyond the setting for the specific case that has been studied. The in-depth understanding that we gain from one case, might help to also say something about other cases in other contexts but with similar dynamics at stake. However, you need to be careful to not generalize your findings across populations or universes.

Argyrou, A. (2017) Making the Case for Case Studies in Empirical Legal Research. Utrecht Law Review, Vol.13 (3), pp.95-113

Flyvbjerg, B. (2006.) Five Misunderstandings about Case-Study Research, Qualitative Inquiry 12( 2), 219-245.

Gerring, J. (2004) What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good for? American Political Science Review 98( 2), 341-354.

Simons, H. (2014) Case Study Research: In-Depth Understanding in Context. In P. Leavy (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research, Oxford University Press.

Webley, L. (2016) Stumbling Blocks in Empirical Legal Research: Case Study Research. Law and Method, 10.

Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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• Why and How: Using the Case Study Method in the Law Classroom

Post by: Jackie Kim and Lisa Brem

Why should legal educators use case studies and other experiential teaching methods, such as role plays and simulations, in their classes?  Hasn’t the Langdell method served legal education well these last 140 years?  Certainly creating and using experiential materials requires a different set of skills from faculty, elicits a different response and level of engagement from students, and poses barriers to implementation. The ABA’s LEAPS Project [i] has a comprehensive list of objections to practical problem solving in the classroom: materials are time consuming and expensive to create and deploy; addition of a case study or simulation to a syllabus inherently displaces other material; and there are few incentives from law school leaders to introduce this type of teaching.

Yet, the argument promoting experiential materials and techniques is strong. The 2007 Carnegie Report [ii] recommended integrating lawyering skills practice into the curriculum alongside doctrinal courses, and the ABA added simulation courses to the list of practical experiences that can and should be offered by law schools in its 2015 Guidance Memo [iii] .

In a 2007 Vanderbilt Law Review article [iv] , HLS Dean Martha Minow and Professor Todd D. Rakoff argued that Langdell’s approach to teaching students using appellate cases does not do enough to prepare law students for real-world problems: “The fact is, Langdell’s case method is good for some things, but not good for others. We are not talking about fancy goals here; we are talking about teaching students ‘how to think like a lawyer.’”

But does the case study method result in a higher degree of student learning? While we have not yet seen a study on the efficacy of the case study method vs. the Langdell method in law schools, research [v] from political science professor Matthew Krain suggests that case studies and problem-based activities do enhance certain types of learning over other types of pedagogy.  In his investigation, Krain compared the results of pre-and post-course surveys of students who participated in active learning with those who received a traditional lecture course. The case studies and problems that Krain used in his non-traditional classes included: case studies in the form of popular press articles, formal case studies, films, or problem-based case exercises that required students to produce a work product.

Krain found that:

Student-centered reflection, in which students have the opportunity to discuss their understanding of the case, allows both students and instructors to connect active learning experiences back to a larger theoretical context. Case learning is particularly useful for dramatizing abstract theoretical concepts, making seemingly distant events or issues seem more “authentic” or “real,” demonstrating the connection between theory and practice, and building critical-thinking and problem-solving skills (Inoue & Krain, 2014; Krain, 2010; Kuzma & Haney, 2001; Lamy, 2007; Swimelar, 2013).

This study suggests that case-based approaches have great utility in the classroom, and they should be used more often in instances where students’ understanding of conceptual complexity or knowledge of case details is critical. Moreover, case-based exercises can be derived from a variety of different types of materials and still have great utility. If deployed selectively in the context of a more traditional classroom setting as ways to achieve particular educational objectives, case-based approaches can be useful tools in our pedagogical toolbox.

For those who might be ready to try a case study, role play, or simulation, there are resources that can help.  Harvard Law School produces case studies for use throughout the legal curriculum. The HLS Case Studies program publishes these teaching materials, and makes them available to educators, academic staff, students, and trainers. Outside of Harvard Law School, links to resources for educators implementing the case study method can be found on the Case Studies Program Resources page. Listed are case study affiliates at Harvard, legal teaching and learning tools, tips for case teaching, and free case materials. Examples include the Legal Education, ADR, and Practical Problem Solving (LEAPS) Project [vi] from the American Bar Association , which provides resources for various topics on legal education, and the Teaching Post , an educators’ forum offered by the Harvard Business School where professors can seek or provide advice on case study teaching.

“… [O]ur society is full of new problems demanding new solutions, and less so than in the past are lawyers inventing those solutions. We think we can, and ought to, do better.” – Dean Martha Minow & Professor Todd Rakoff. [vii]

[i] “Overcoming Barriers to Teaching ‘Practical Problem-Solving’.” Legal Education, ADR & Practical Problem-Solving (LEAPS) Project, American Bar Association, Section of Dispute Resolution. Accessed March 16, 2017, http://leaps.uoregon.edu/content/overcoming-barriers-teaching-%E2%80%9Cpractical-problem-solving%E2%80%9D. [ii] William M. Sullivan, Anne Colby, Judith Welch Wegner, Lloyd Bond, and Lee S. Shulman, “Educating Lawyers,”  The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (2007). [iii] American Bar Association, “Managing Director’s Guidance Memo,”  Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar  (2015). [iv] Martha Minow and Todd D. Rakoff, “A Case for Another Case Method,” Vanderbilt Law Review 60(2) (2007): 597-607. [v] Matthew Krain, “Putting the learning in case learning? The effects of case-based approaches on student knowledge, attitudes, and engagement,” Journal on Excellence in College Teaching 27(2) (2016): 131-153. [vi] “Overcoming Barriers to Teaching ‘Practical Problem-Solving’.” [vii] Minow and Rakoff.

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What is case law?

Case law is a key component of the legal system and if you’re considering a career in law you’ll need to familiarise yourself with it. Below we explore what case law is, how it can affect future judicial decisions and shape the law as we know it.

By Grant Longstaff . Published 3 April 2024.

Simply put, case law is a law which is established following a decision made by a judge or judges. Case law is developed by interpreting and applying existing laws to a specific situation and clarifying them when necessary. This process then sets a legal precedent which other courts are required to follow, and it will help guide future rulings and interpretations of a particular law.

Importance of case law

Case law plays a significant role in shaping the legal system and ensures it evolves when necessary. It can provide clarity and guidance to legal professionals on how laws are interpreted and applied in real life situations, and helps to ensure consistency in court rulings by drawing on the legal precedents which have informed previous cases.

How case law works

Case law develops through a process of judicial reasoning and decision making. The parties involved in a legal dispute will present their arguments and evidence in a court of law. The judge then considers all of the legal principles, statutes and precedents before reaching a decision. This decision – known as a judgement – becomes part of the body of case law.

Depending on your future practice area you may need to regularly find and interpret case law to establish if it’s still suitable. Remember, case law evolves, and so a decision which once was solid may now be lacking.

This all may feel a little daunting right now, but if you choose to study law you’ll come to understand the importance of case law, develop keen research skills, explore legal case studies and learn of the judicial decisions which have shaped today’s justice system.

Judicial decisions and precedents

Judicial decisions are key to developing case law as each decision contributes to the body of legal precedents shaping future rulings. These precedents are binding and must be followed by lower courts. You can find a detailed guide to the court structure in the UK on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website.

When it comes to reviewing these judicial principles and legal precedents, you’ll likely find they come as either a law report or transcript. A transcript is simply a written record of the court’s judgement. A law report on the other hand is generally only written when the case sets a precedent. The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR) – the official law reporting service – describes law reports as a “highly processed account of the case” and will “contain all of the components you’ll find in a transcript, along with a number of other important and useful elements of content.” It’s also worth remembering a law report will wield more weight than a transcript when it comes to building your legal case or argument.

Common law and stare decisis

Common law refers to the wider legal system which was developed in medieval England and has evolved throughout the centuries since. It relies deeply on case law, using the judicial decisions and precedents, to change over time. Case law helps establish new principles and redefine existing ones. It also helps resolve any ambiguity and allows for nuance to be incorporated into common law.

When it comes to case law you’ll likely come across the term “stare decisis”, a Latin phrase, meaning “to stand by decisions”. In a legal setting, stare decisis refers to the principle that decisions made by higher courts are binding on lower courts, promoting fairness and stability throughout common law and the legal system.

Ultimately, case law is a crucial element of the legal system, providing guidance, consistency, and precedent for legal interpretations and rulings.

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• What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

Published on May 8, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 20, 2023.

A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon. Case studies are commonly used in social, educational, clinical, and business research.

A case study research design usually involves qualitative methods , but quantitative methods are sometimes also used. Case studies are good for describing , comparing, evaluating and understanding different aspects of a research problem .

Table of contents

When to do a case study, step 1: select a case, step 2: build a theoretical framework, step 3: collect your data, step 4: describe and analyze the case, other interesting articles.

A case study is an appropriate research design when you want to gain concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about a specific real-world subject. It allows you to explore the key characteristics, meanings, and implications of the case.

Case studies are often a good choice in a thesis or dissertation . They keep your project focused and manageable when you don’t have the time or resources to do large-scale research.

You might use just one complex case study where you explore a single subject in depth, or conduct multiple case studies to compare and illuminate different aspects of your research problem.

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Once you have developed your problem statement and research questions , you should be ready to choose the specific case that you want to focus on. A good case study should have the potential to:

• Provide new or unexpected insights into the subject
• Challenge or complicate existing assumptions and theories
• Propose practical courses of action to resolve a problem
• Open up new directions for future research

TipIf your research is more practical in nature and aims to simultaneously investigate an issue as you solve it, consider conducting action research instead.

Unlike quantitative or experimental research , a strong case study does not require a random or representative sample. In fact, case studies often deliberately focus on unusual, neglected, or outlying cases which may shed new light on the research problem.

Example of an outlying case studyIn the 1960s the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania was discovered to have extremely low rates of heart disease compared to the US average. It became an important case study for understanding previously neglected causes of heart disease.

However, you can also choose a more common or representative case to exemplify a particular category, experience or phenomenon.

Example of a representative case studyIn the 1920s, two sociologists used Muncie, Indiana as a case study of a typical American city that supposedly exemplified the changing culture of the US at the time.

While case studies focus more on concrete details than general theories, they should usually have some connection with theory in the field. This way the case study is not just an isolated description, but is integrated into existing knowledge about the topic. It might aim to:

• Exemplify a theory by showing how it explains the case under investigation
• Expand on a theory by uncovering new concepts and ideas that need to be incorporated
• Challenge a theory by exploring an outlier case that doesn’t fit with established assumptions

To ensure that your analysis of the case has a solid academic grounding, you should conduct a literature review of sources related to the topic and develop a theoretical framework . This means identifying key concepts and theories to guide your analysis and interpretation.

There are many different research methods you can use to collect data on your subject. Case studies tend to focus on qualitative data using methods such as interviews , observations , and analysis of primary and secondary sources (e.g., newspaper articles, photographs, official records). Sometimes a case study will also collect quantitative data.

Example of a mixed methods case studyFor a case study of a wind farm development in a rural area, you could collect quantitative data on employment rates and business revenue, collect qualitative data on local people’s perceptions and experiences, and analyze local and national media coverage of the development.

The aim is to gain as thorough an understanding as possible of the case and its context.

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In writing up the case study, you need to bring together all the relevant aspects to give as complete a picture as possible of the subject.

How you report your findings depends on the type of research you are doing. Some case studies are structured like a standard scientific paper or thesis , with separate sections or chapters for the methods , results and discussion .

Others are written in a more narrative style, aiming to explore the case from various angles and analyze its meanings and implications (for example, by using textual analysis or discourse analysis ).

In all cases, though, make sure to give contextual details about the case, connect it back to the literature and theory, and discuss how it fits into wider patterns or debates.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

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Legal precedents play an important role in decision-making and aids the judicial officers in referring to similar case laws, ultimately saving time and scrutinizing results. And of course, it’s usually a research paralegal or associate tasked with a case law study and discovery concerning a legal matter. This case-building work takes thorough research, where paralegals or associates comb through law books, legal databases, and case law statutes in both physical and digital form. Researching large databases can understandably be a tedious job, but with the most practical case law research tools these tasks can be simplified.

Legal precedent example

In Kudlacik v Johnnys Shawnee Inc , it was observed that once a legal principle has been established by a court, as per the doctrine of stare decisis , it will typically be upheld by the same court when the same legal issue is brought up in consecutive instances, and in all courts of lower rank.

So what transpired? The Supreme Court upheld a district court’s decision to dismiss the plaintiff’s lawsuit against the defendants (two commercial drinking establishments) for injuries sustained in a collision with a vehicle whose driver had consumed alcoholic beverages at the defendants’ establishments prior to the collision.

On appeal, the plaintiff urged the Supreme Court to re-examine the district court’s case law shielding commercial drinking facilities from liability for the wrongs perpetrated by their inebriated customers. The Supreme Court upheld the district court’s ruling after restating the common law in accordance with the stare decisis principle, ruling:

• This court declines to overturn Ling v. Jan’s Liquors, 703 P.2d 731 (Kan. 1985), and the plaintiff failed to state a claim for negligence; and
• Plaintiff failed to state a claim for aiding and abetting under Restatement (Second) of Torts.

“Legal researchers have one perennial question: Have I done enough?” Helping the legal researcher feel confident they’ve done enough – Read the full white paper .

How to use case law as a precedent in a report

Legal reports are typically prepared in one of two ways: in a straightforward, neutral-explanatory tone or in a more persuasive manner.

Include basic elements of a brief

Though writing styles and document templates differ, a report should contain:

• A brief description of the issue that is to be explained in detail further with a simple resolution;
• A statement of facts at hand;
• A comparative study drawn analytically with the facts and the issue concerning the laws;
• A conclusion to the issue, its facts, and its legal analysis.

Align facts and legal issues

Legal precedents are when a case’s circumstances and legal requirements match those of a contemporary legal dispute; unless a party can demonstrate that it was incorrectly resolved or that it differed materially, the precedent will typically govern the outcome of a later similar case.

For judges, it is important to discern the “ratio decidendi,” or the grounds for the decisions taken in previous cases, to apply the precedents stated in a report. In cases where the reasoning is similar enough to lead to the same or similar conclusion, it is the reasons—and nothing else—that “link” subsequent cases.

Additional citations and considerations

When reviewing law reports to cite valid case law it is important for lawyers, paralegals, and students to understand the significance of learning how to navigate and analyze a law report swiftly. The judgment is only one part of a legal report. It starts off with the names of the parties, the hearing date, the judge or judges’ names, and, typically, the court. The headnote includes a summary of the relevant facts and the judge’s decision, followed by catchwords and indexing terms. While working on the report, it is important to ascertain the precedents referred to in drawing the conclusion and upon whom the decision has been relied upon.

Following are the points to be kept in mind while citing case law and constructing a reliable report:

• Write in simple and standard legal language
• Use short sentences
• Employ fewer jargons
• Follow the IRAC Method (Issue, Reasoning, Analysis, and Conclusion)
• Create sub-topics to improve readability
• Maintain the flow of the report

Final thoughts on precedents

It’s often challenging to determine what “the law” is in any given legal situation. In order to determine the actual law that applies to your case, you may need to compare many different instances to the particular facts of your case.

Do you know the laws and rules that apply to your case? Have you located a case or cases from the past that have similar facts and legal issues to yours? Finding a case that is on point or similar enough demands a lot of time and cumbersome research. If that’s where you find yourself today, request a free trial of Westlaw Precision to drastically streamline your case law research or try Practical Law to get access to thousands of expert-written how-to guides, forms, templates, checklists, and more across all major practice areas today.

The content appearing on this website is not intended as, and shall not be relied upon as, legal advice. It is general in nature and may not reflect all recent legal developments. Thomson Reuters is not a law firm and an attorney-client relationship is not formed through your use of this website. You should consult with qualified legal counsel before acting on any content found on this website.  

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• Introduction

The case study creation process

Types of case studies, benefits and limitations.

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case study , detailed description and assessment of a specific situation in the real world created for the purpose of deriving generalizations and other insights from it. A case study can be about an individual, a group of people, an organization, or an event, among other subjects.

By focusing on a specific subject in its natural setting, a case study can help improve understanding of the broader features and processes at work. Case studies are a research method used in multiple fields, including business, criminology , education , medicine and other forms of health care, anthropology , political science , psychology , and social work . Data in case studies can be both qualitative and quantitative. Unlike experiments, where researchers control and manipulate situations, case studies are considered to be “naturalistic” because subjects are studied in their natural context . ( See also natural experiment .)

The creation of a case study typically involves the following steps:

• The research question to be studied is defined, informed by existing literature and previous research. Researchers should clearly define the scope of the case, and they should compile a list of evidence to be collected as well as identify the nature of insights that they expect to gain from the case study.
• Once the case is identified, the research team is given access to the individual, organization, or situation being studied. Individuals are informed of risks associated with participation and must provide their consent , which may involve signing confidentiality or anonymity agreements.
• Researchers then collect evidence using multiple methods, which may include qualitative techniques, such as interviews, focus groups , and direct observations, as well as quantitative methods, such as surveys, questionnaires, and data audits. The collection procedures need to be well defined to ensure the relevance and accuracy of the evidence.
• The collected evidence is analyzed to come up with insights. Each data source must be reviewed carefully by itself and in the larger context of the case study so as to ensure continued relevance. At the same time, care must be taken not to force the analysis to fit (potentially preconceived) conclusions. While the eventual case study may serve as the basis for generalizations, these generalizations must be made cautiously to ensure that specific nuances are not lost in the averages.
• Finally, the case study is packaged for larger groups and publication. At this stage some information may be withheld, as in business case studies, to allow readers to draw their own conclusions. In scientific fields, the completed case study needs to be a coherent whole, with all findings and statistical relationships clearly documented.

Case studies have been used as a research method across multiple fields. They are particularly popular in the fields of law, business, and employee training; they typically focus on a problem that an individual or organization is facing. The situation is presented in considerable detail, often with supporting data, to discussion participants, who are asked to make recommendations that will solve the stated problem. The business case study as a method of instruction was made popular in the 1920s by instructors at Harvard Business School who adapted an approach used at Harvard Law School in which real-world cases were used in classroom discussions. Other business and law schools started compiling case studies as teaching aids for students. In a business school case study, students are not provided with the complete list of facts pertaining to the topic and are thus forced to discuss and compare their perspectives with those of their peers to recommend solutions.

In criminology , case studies typically focus on the lives of an individual or a group of individuals. These studies can provide particularly valuable insight into the personalities and motives of individual criminals, but they may suffer from a lack of objectivity on the part of the researchers (typically because of the researchers’ biases when working with people with a criminal history), and their findings may be difficult to generalize.

In sociology , the case-study method was developed by Frédéric Le Play in France during the 19th century. This approach involves a field worker staying with a family for a period of time, gathering data on the family members’ attitudes and interactions and on their income, expenditures, and physical possessions. Similar approaches have been used in anthropology . Such studies can sometimes continue for many years.

Case studies provide insight into situations that involve a specific entity or set of circumstances. They can be beneficial in helping to explain the causal relationships between quantitative indicators in a field of study, such as what drives a company’s market share. By introducing real-world examples, they also plunge the reader into an actual, concrete situation and make the concepts real rather than theoretical. They also help people study rare situations that they might not otherwise experience.

Because case studies are in a “naturalistic” environment , they are limited in terms of research design: researchers lack control over what they are studying, which means that the results often cannot be reproduced. Also, care must be taken to stay within the bounds of the research question on which the case study is focusing. Other limitations to case studies revolve around the data collected. It may be difficult, for instance, for researchers to organize the large volume of data that can emerge from the study, and their analysis of the data must be carefully thought through to produce scientifically valid insights. The research methodology used to generate these insights is as important as the insights themselves, for the latter need to be seen in the proper context. Taken out of context, they may lead to erroneous conclusions. Like all scientific studies, case studies need to be approached objectively; personal bias or opinion may skew the research methods as well as the results. ( See also confirmation bias .)

Business case studies in particular have been criticized for approaching a problem or situation from a narrow perspective. Students are expected to come up with solutions for a problem based on the data provided. However, in real life, the situation is typically reversed: business managers face a problem and must then look for data to help them solve it.

6 Steps To Write A Flawless Legal Case Study

As a law student, you will need to get through complex case studies and present accurate analysis of those cases. But anyone pursuing a law degree knows that working on such case study analysis is, by no means, simple. However, most of the time, the difficulty arises from the lack of understanding about how to approach the legal case study analysis.

Now, if you’re having the same difficulty in preparing a legal case study, then you need to learn about the steps properly and go through some legal case analysis examples . The steps of preparing legal case studies are elaborated below.

Steps to Prepare A Legal Case Study Analysis

Step 1: read the case thoroughly.

You should carefully go through the case at least once until you can figure out which facts are most vital for the case or begin analysing the court’s holding. It’s hard to accurately determine what was central to the court’s reasoning until you’ve read the case all the way through.

The first time you go through a case, don’t think about figuring it all out at once. Just read to get a sense of what’s happening, who the major parties are, and what they want the court to do.

Step 2: Outline the case’s procedural history

All written court decisions consist of a case that has been through at least one round of appeal. Hence, as a law student, you should be able to identify the path this particular case followed from the initial lawsuit to the court proceedings that ultimately developed the opinion you’re reading.

The procedural history elaborates on the role of the litigants, and thus it imperative to know what each of them is identified as throughout the written opinion. You need to also understand how the case moved through the court system, who sued whom, and who appealed in order to prepare a solid analysis.

Step 3: Identify the relevant facts

At the basis of every legal case, there has to be a story of a dispute between two parties. However, not all of the facts and circumstances associated with this dispute will be significant to the holding of the case. To evaluate the legal case, you must decipher which parts of the story are relevant to the issue highlighted in the court that made the decision.

In many cases, the initial information that prompted the dispute may be summed up in a sentence or two. Often, what’s really essential is what happened afterwards. Just like Samsung SWOT analysis for reference.

Step 4: Present the issue as a yes/no question

The easiest way to decipher a court’s analysis and reasoning of the legal issue is to create a question that relates to the case. You can phrase the question in a manner that can be answered with a straight yes or no.

In many cases, the issue before the court may raise multiple yes/no questions, or a few follow-up questions that are based on the answer to the first. This usually happens when a specific factual situation present in the case has never been explored by any other court. The court must first understand whether a particular law is applicable to that factual situation at all before it can determine how the law applies.

Step 5: Provide the court’s answer to the question

After you’ve rephrased your issue as a question that can be addressed with a yes or no, in many cases, the court’s answer will be one of these words. However, some cases may also involve more nuanced response, like “sometimes” or “maybe.”

Some judges possess a clear, simple writing style, and they’ll phrase the issue as a question and address it directly. However, this isn’t ideally the case. In most written opinions, you will have to determine for the question and answer all by yourself.

Step 6: Emphasis on the facts that the court found most important

Among the relevant facts you’ve already identified related to a specific legal case, some will be more significant than others because they reflect the reason the court decided on one rule over another.

Sometimes the simple way to find the court’s fact/facts is to think about what would have happened if they’d decided to focus on a different fact. Even though many other details may be relevant, or important to the case, those aren’t the information that made the court rule the way it did.

These steps will ensure that your legal case study analysis turns out perfect.

Written by Andy Alvin

Andy Alvin is an education consultant at a reputed firm in the United States. He is also associated with MyAssignmenthelp.com as a part-time online tutor.

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A case is a civil or criminal proceeding at law or in equity . It can also be referred to as an action , suit , or controversy , depending on the jurisdiction and the nature of the dispute .

• A civil case normally involves two parties with equal status, such as a case between two citizens or a case between a citizen and a corporation .
• A criminal case typically involves two parties with different statuses; one party (the prosecutor ) represents the State - the other party (the defendant ) generally speaking, is an individual or a corporation.

See controversy for an explanation of the “ case or controversy ” requirement in federal court .

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Case study definition

Case study, a term which some of you may know from the "Case Study of Vanitas" anime and manga, is a thorough examination of a particular subject, such as a person, group, location, occasion, establishment, phenomena, etc. They are most frequently utilized in research of business, medicine, education and social behaviour. There are a different types of case studies that researchers might use:

• Collective case studies

• Descriptive case studies

• Explanatory case studies

• Exploratory case studies

• Instrumental case studies

• Intrinsic case studies

Case studies are usually much more sophisticated and professional than regular essays and courseworks, as they require a lot of verified data, are research-oriented and not necessarily designed to be read by the general public.

How to write a case study?

It very much depends on the topic of your case study, as a medical case study and a coffee business case study have completely different sources, outlines, target demographics, etc. But just for this example, let's outline a coffee roaster case study. Firstly, it's likely going to be a problem-solving case study, like most in the business and economics field are. Here are some tips for these types of case studies:

• Your case scenario should be precisely defined in terms of your unique assessment criteria.

• Determine the primary issues by analyzing the scenario. Think about how they connect to the main ideas and theories in your piece.

• Find and investigate any theories or methods that might be relevant to your case.

• Keep your audience in mind. Exactly who are your stakeholder(s)? If writing a case study on coffee roasters, it's probably gonna be suppliers, landlords, investors, customers, etc.

• Indicate the best solution(s) and how they should be implemented. Make sure your suggestions are grounded in pertinent theories and useful resources, as well as being realistic, practical, and attainable.

• Carefully proofread your case study. Keep in mind these four principles when editing: clarity, honesty, reality and relevance.

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Disney wrongful death lawsuit over allergy highlights danger of fine print

The Walt Disney Co. is trying to toss out a widower’s wrongful death lawsuit , arguing he agreed to settle any disputes with the entertainment giant and any of its affiliates out of court when he signed up for a free trial of its streaming service Disney+.

In February, Jeffrey Piccolo sued Walt Disney Parks and Resorts over the death of his wife at a restaurant at Walt Disney World.

His wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, who was allergic to nuts and dairy, dined at Raglan Road Irish Pub, in the resort's Disney Springs shopping, dining and entertainment complex in Florida. Tangsuan, a New York doctor, experienced a severe allergic reaction and died.

In a legal filing, lawyers for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts said the matter should be referred to an outside arbitrator because when Piccolo signed up for a Disney+ account in 2019 and when he bought tickets to EPCOT on the Disney website in 2023, he agreed to arbitrate all disputes against the company.

Piccolo’s lawyers countered that he never signed an agreement with Walt Disney Parks. Even if he had, they said the terms and conditions would not extend to his wife. 

“We are deeply saddened by the family’s loss and understand their grief. Given that this restaurant is neither owned nor operated by Disney, we are merely defending ourselves against the plaintiff’s attorney’s attempt to include us in their lawsuit against the restaurant," Disney said in a statement.

The Raglan Road Irish Pub, located at the resort, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In court papers, Disney described its relationship with the restaurant as a landlord.

Are consumers unwittingly signing away their legal rights when they sign up for a streaming service? Quite possibly.

“Sadly, Disney could very well have a viable argument here,” University of Buffalo law professor Christine Bartholomew said. “The Supreme Court has, time and again, treated these arbitration provisions as binding. It doesn't matter if it's in fine, teeny tiny print in the terms of conditions.”

Every day, we blindly click “I agree” when we sign up for a service or buy tickets. But what’s in that fine print can cause harm.

“As it currently stands, a forced arbitration provision in the terms and conditions of the sale or service can bind parties,” Bartholomew said. “Even if the consumer didn't read the terms. Even if the consumer didn't understand the consequences.”

Including mandatory arbitration clauses in contracts is a common legal tactic to avoid class action lawsuits and large damages awards. 

Companies say they make sure arbitration is fair for consumers and argue it is also faster and less expensive. But critics say the secretive process puts consumers at a massive disadvantage and very few people pursue a legal case through the arbitration system.

The Disney+ subscriber agreement says it applies to all disputes involving Walt Disney Co. or its affiliates, with two exceptions.

“Almost no one reads these contracts but the courts still enforce them,” University of Maryland law professor Jeff Sovern said.

Consumers don’t sign away all of their rights in these contracts, but they sign away a lot, including the constitutional right to a jury trial and their day in court, Sovern said. 

“Congress has limited the use of arbitration clauses in some transactions but not enough, in my view,” he said.

According to the wrongful death lawsuit, Tangsuan and Piccolo chose the restaurant because it advertised its commitment to accommodating people with allergies. 

When they told the waiter Tangsuan had severe allergies to dairy and nuts, she was “unequivocally assured” the food would be allergen-free, according to the lawsuit.

When the orders of broccoli and corn fritter, scallops and onion rings arrived, they did not have allergen-free flags so Piccolo and Tangsuan inquired again if the food was allergen-free and were told the dishes were safe for Tangsuan to eat.

About 45 minutes later while shopping alone at a nearby store, Tangsuan had a severe allergic reaction. She administered an EpiPen but began having difficulty breathing and collapsed. She was taken to the hospital where she later died.

The medical examiner determined her death was the result of anaphylaxis “due to elevated levels of dairy and nuts in her system."

Disney restaurants have strict protocols for food allergies and are known for their attention to allergens.

Lawmakers have proposed fixes to give consumers more leverage. Some states have tried to address the issue. A rule proposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to allow consumers to file class-action lawsuits over disputes with banks, credit card companies and other financial service firms was killed in 2017 . 

At the time, Wells Fargo faced a huge scandal over millions of unauthorized consumer accounts. Richard Cordray, at the time the CFPB's director, said the outcome preserved “a two-tiered justice system.”

David Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor and the former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, says he doubts Disney’s terms of service apply in this case, but mandatory arbitration remains “a huge thorn for consumers.” 

“The CFPB came really close to getting a rule that would have protected consumers but they got cut off at the knees in Congress,” he said. 

The agency has a congressional mandate to address mandatory arbitration, Vladeck said, and “people like me have been pushing the CFPB to promulgate a new rule to protect consumers.”

“ Most of the companies in the U.S. require mandatory arbitration and it allows them to, by and large, cut off much relief,” he said. “Companies love it but individuals who are harmed by these corporations, they really don’t have any access to any forum that would give them relief and that’s a real problem.”

How can consumers dodge this quandary? According to Bartholomew, their options are limited.

“The Supreme Court's view is if you don't like it, don't sign it,” she said. 

But, she says, that’s hardly realistic advice. So she encourages consumers to lobby lawmakers for change. 

“To me, if consumers want to fix this, they need to vote for politicians who are willing to change the power dynamic between corporations and consumers,” Bartholomew said.

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• Case Study | Definition, Examples & Methods

Case Study | Definition, Examples & Methods

Published on 5 May 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 30 January 2023.

A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organisation, or phenomenon. Case studies are commonly used in social, educational, clinical, and business research.

A case study research design usually involves qualitative methods , but quantitative methods are sometimes also used. Case studies are good for describing , comparing, evaluating, and understanding different aspects of a research problem .

Table of contents

When to do a case study, step 1: select a case, step 2: build a theoretical framework, step 3: collect your data, step 4: describe and analyse the case.

A case study is an appropriate research design when you want to gain concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about a specific real-world subject. It allows you to explore the key characteristics, meanings, and implications of the case.

Case studies are often a good choice in a thesis or dissertation . They keep your project focused and manageable when you don’t have the time or resources to do large-scale research.

You might use just one complex case study where you explore a single subject in depth, or conduct multiple case studies to compare and illuminate different aspects of your research problem.

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Once you have developed your problem statement and research questions , you should be ready to choose the specific case that you want to focus on. A good case study should have the potential to:

• Provide new or unexpected insights into the subject
• Challenge or complicate existing assumptions and theories
• Propose practical courses of action to resolve a problem
• Open up new directions for future research

Unlike quantitative or experimental research, a strong case study does not require a random or representative sample. In fact, case studies often deliberately focus on unusual, neglected, or outlying cases which may shed new light on the research problem.

If you find yourself aiming to simultaneously investigate and solve an issue, consider conducting action research . As its name suggests, action research conducts research and takes action at the same time, and is highly iterative and flexible. 

However, you can also choose a more common or representative case to exemplify a particular category, experience, or phenomenon.

While case studies focus more on concrete details than general theories, they should usually have some connection with theory in the field. This way the case study is not just an isolated description, but is integrated into existing knowledge about the topic. It might aim to:

• Exemplify a theory by showing how it explains the case under investigation
• Expand on a theory by uncovering new concepts and ideas that need to be incorporated
• Challenge a theory by exploring an outlier case that doesn’t fit with established assumptions

To ensure that your analysis of the case has a solid academic grounding, you should conduct a literature review of sources related to the topic and develop a theoretical framework . This means identifying key concepts and theories to guide your analysis and interpretation.

There are many different research methods you can use to collect data on your subject. Case studies tend to focus on qualitative data using methods such as interviews, observations, and analysis of primary and secondary sources (e.g., newspaper articles, photographs, official records). Sometimes a case study will also collect quantitative data .

The aim is to gain as thorough an understanding as possible of the case and its context.

In writing up the case study, you need to bring together all the relevant aspects to give as complete a picture as possible of the subject.

How you report your findings depends on the type of research you are doing. Some case studies are structured like a standard scientific paper or thesis, with separate sections or chapters for the methods , results , and discussion .

Others are written in a more narrative style, aiming to explore the case from various angles and analyse its meanings and implications (for example, by using textual analysis or discourse analysis ).

In all cases, though, make sure to give contextual details about the case, connect it back to the literature and theory, and discuss how it fits into wider patterns or debates.

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Former congressman Santos pleads guilty; faces at least 2 years in prison

Former U.S. Representative George Santos pleaded guilty to criminal corruption charges on Monday, cementing the downfall of a novice politician who was expelled from Congress last year after a brief, scandal-plagued tenure.

What happened in the Kolkata rape case that triggered doctors’ protests?

Activists and doctors in India demand better safeguarding of women and medical professionals after a trainee medic was raped and murdered in Kolkata.

Activists and doctors across India continued to protest on Wednesday to demand justice for a female doctor, who was raped and murdered while on duty in a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.

Feminist groups rallied on the streets in protests titled “Reclaim the Night” in Kolkata overnight on Wednesday – on the eve of India’s independence day – in solidarity with the victim, demanding the principal of RG Kar Medical College resign. Some feminist protesters also marched well beyond Kolkata, including in the capital Delhi.

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While the protests were largely peaceful, a small mob of men stormed the medical college and vandalised property. This group was dispersed by the police.

This comes after two days of nationwide protests by doctors following the incident at RG Kar Medical College in West Bengal’s capital city. “Sit-in demonstrations and agitation in the hospital campus will continue,” one of the protesting doctors, identified as Dr Mridul, told Al Jazeera.

Services in some medical centres were halted indefinitely, and marches and vigils shed light on issues of sexual violence, as well as doctors’ safety in the world’s most populous nation.

What happened to the doctor in Kolkata?

A 31-year-old trainee doctor’s dead body, bearing multiple injuries, was found on August 9 in a government teaching hospital in Kolkata.

The parents of the victim were initially told “by hospital authorities that their daughter had committed suicide,” lawyer and women’s rights activist Vrinda Grover told Al Jazeera. But an autopsy confirmed that the victim was raped and killed.

Grover has appeared for victims in sexual violence cases in India in the past, including Bilkis Bano , a Muslim woman who was gang-raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots, and Soni Sori, a tribal activist based in Chhattisgarh state.

Thousands of doctors marched in Kolkata on Monday, demanding better security measures and justice for the victim.

On Tuesday, the Kolkata High Court transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA) called for a nationwide halting of elective services in hospitals starting on Monday. Elective services are medical treatments that can be deferred or are not deemed medically necessary.

On Tuesday, FORDA announced on its X account that it is calling off the strike after Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda accepted protest demands.

One of these demands was solidifying the Central Protection Act, intended to be a central law to protect medical professionals from violence, which was proposed in the parliament’s lower house in 2022, but has not yet been enacted.

FORDA said that the ministry would begin working on the Act within 15 days of the news release, and that a written statement from the ministry was expected to be released soon.

Press release regarding call off of strike. In our fight for the sad incident at R G Kar, the demands raised by us have been met in full by the @OfficeofJPNadda , with concrete steps in place, and not just verbal assurances. Central Healthcare Protection Act ratification… pic.twitter.com/OXdSZgM1Jc — FORDA INDIA (@FordaIndia) August 13, 2024

Why are some Indian doctors continuing to protest?

However, other doctors’ federations and hospitals have said they will not back down on the strike until a concrete solution is found, including a central law to curb attacks on doctors.

Those continuing to strike included the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA), Delhi-based All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Indira Gandhi Hospital, local media reported.

Ragunandan Dixit, the general secretary of the AIIMS Resident Doctors’ Association, said that the indefinite strike will continue until their demands are met, including a written guarantee of the implementation of the Central Protection Act.

Medical professionals in India want a central law that makes violence against doctors a non-bailable, punishable offence, in hopes that it deters such violent crimes against doctors in the future.

Those continuing to protest also call for the dismissal of the principal of the college, who was transferred. “We’re demanding his termination, not just transfer,” Dr Abdul Waqim Khan, a protesting doctor told ANI news agency. “We’re also demanding a death penalty for the criminal,” he added.

“Calling off the strike now would mean that female resident doctors might never receive justice,” Dr Dhruv Chauhan, member of the National Council of the Indian Medical Association’s Junior Doctors’ Network told local news agency Press Trust of India (PTI).

Which states in India saw doctors’ protests?

While the protests started in West Bengal’s Kolkata on Monday, they spread across the country on Tuesday.

The capital New Delhi, union territory Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow and city Prayagraj, Bihar capital Patna and southern state Goa also saw doctors’ protests.

Who is the suspect in the Kolkata rape case?

Local media reported that the police arrested suspect Sanjoy Roy, a civic volunteer who would visit the hospital often. He has unrestricted access to the ward and the police found compelling evidence against him.

The parents of the victim told the court that they suspect that it was a case of gang rape, local media reported.

Why is sexual violence on the rise in India?

Sexual violence is rampant in India, where 90 rapes were reported on average every day in 2022.

Laws against sexual violence were made stricter following a rape case in 2012, when a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern was brutally gang-raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi. Four men were hanged for the gang rape, which had triggered a nationwide protests.

But despite new laws in place, “the graph of sexual violence in India continues to spiral unabated,” said Grover.

She added that in her experience at most workplaces, scant attention is paid to diligent and rigorous enforcement of the laws.

“It is regrettable that government and institutions respond only after the woman has already suffered sexual assault and often succumbed to death in the incident,” she added, saying preventive measures are not taken.

In many rape cases in India, perpetrators have not been held accountable. In 2002, Bano was raped by 11 men, who were sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2022, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi authorised the release of the men, who were greeted with applause and garlands upon their release.

However, their remission was overruled and the Supreme Court sent the rapists back to jail after public outcry.

Grover believes that the death penalty will not deter rapists until India addresses the deeply entrenched problem of sexual violence. “For any change, India as a society will have to confront and challenge, patriarchy, discrimination and inequality that is embedded in our homes, families, cultural practices, social norms and religious traditions”.

What makes this case particularly prominent is that it happened in Kolkata, Sandip Roy, a freelance contributor to NPR, told Al Jazeera. “Kolkata actually prided itself for a long time on being really low in the case of violence against women and being relatively safe for women.”

A National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report said that Kolkata had the lowest number of rape cases in 2021 among 19 metropolitan cities, with 11 cases in the whole year. In comparison, New Delhi was reported to have recorded 1, 226 cases that year.

Prime Minister Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called for dismissing the government in West Bengal, where Kolkata is located, led by Mamata Banerjee of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). Banerjee’s party is part of the opposition alliance.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in parliament, also called for justice for the victim.

“The attempt to save the accused instead of providing justice to the victim raises serious questions on the hospital and the local administration,” he posted on X on Wednesday.

Roy spoke about the politicisation of the case since an opposition party governs West Bengal. “The local government’s opposition will try to make this an issue of women’s safety in the state,” he said.

Have doctors in India protested before?

Roy explained to Al Jazeera that this case is an overlap of two kinds of violence, the violence against a woman, as well as violence against “an overworked medical professional”.

Doctors in India do not have sufficient workplace security, and attacks on doctors have started protests in India before.

In 2019, two junior doctors were physically assaulted in Kolkata’s Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital (NRSMCH) by a mob of people after a 75-year-old patient passed away in the hospital.

Those attacks set off doctors’ protests in Kolkata, and senior doctors in West Bengal offered to resign from their positions to express solidarity with the junior doctors who were attacked.

More than 75 percent of Indian doctors have faced some form of violence, according to a survey by the Indian Medical Association in 2015.

What happens next?

The case will now be handled by the CBI, which sent a team to the hospital premises to inspect the crime scene on Wednesday morning, local media reported.

According to Indian law, the investigation into a case of rape or gang rape is to be completed within two months from the date of lodging of the First Information Report (police complaint), according to Grover, the lawyer.

The highest court in West Bengal, which transferred the case from the local police to the CBI on Tuesday, has directed the central investigating agency to file periodic status reports regarding the progress of the investigation.

The FIR was filed on August 9, which means the investigation is expected to be completed by October 9.

Bengal women will create history with a night long protest in various major locations in the state for at 11.55pm on 14th of August’24,the night that’ll mark our 78th year as an independent country. The campaign, 'Women, Reclaim the Night: The Night is Ours', is aimed at seeking… pic.twitter.com/Si9fd6YGNb — purpleready (@epicnephrin_e) August 13, 2024

RICO charge: The meaning and history of Georgia's racketeering law and why Fulton County DA Fani Willis used it against Trump

• Fulton County DA Fani Willis charged Donald Trump and his associates under the state's RICO laws.
• This would allow the DA to pursue a "broad" case that involves multiple people, a law professor told Insider.
• Georgia prosecutors have used RICO laws against teachers, rappers, and more.

The Fulton County District Attorney's Office indicted Donald Trump and several of his 2020 campaign operatives on Monday, with charges stemming from efforts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election result.

District Attorney Fani Willis brought charges against Trump and 18 other defendants under the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The federal RICO Act was initially intended to charge mafias and gangs. In recent years, the law has been applied more broadly in the state of Georgia.

On Monday, Fulton County's courts website momentarily posted — and then removed — a document appearing to show Trump would face charges including racketeering . Nicholas Cotten, a spokesperson for the Fulton County courts system, called it "a fictitious document" in a statement.

Willis opened the case after Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes" while the votes for the 2020 election were being tallied. In 2022, a Georgia special grand jury heard from dozens of witnesses, including local officials and Trump aides who testified.

The charges include forgery in the first degree, false statements and writing, and violating the RICO Act.

While the RICO Act is a federal law, Georgia has additional racketeering statutes that can and have been used against figures outside of mob bosses or typical criminal enterprises since they were adopted in 1980.

If found guilty under the RICO Act, Trump could face a minimum sentence of five years and a maximum sentence of 20 years and a fine.

Melissa Redmon, a director for the University of Georgia School of Law's Prosecutorial Justice Program, told Insider that seeking the state's RICO Act would allow prosecutors to pursue a "broad" case involving multiple people and events that could have occurred at different periods of time and even locations.

"The idea behind the RICO is that you can charge the mastermind with everything that those involved in the enterprise did," Redmon said. And the RICO Act could give prosecutors the opportunity to give a "fuller picture of everything that was done to influence or to disrupt the election in Georgia."

What is the RICO Act?

The RICO Act was introduced by the federal government in 1970, originally as a legal means to prosecute mafias and entire groups involved in organized crimes.

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But the law doesn't refer to a specific offense. Racketeering activity can cover a wide range of criminal activities, including gambling, extortion, arson, robbery, bribery, theft, and fraud. It is not limited to financial schemes.

However, a federal RICO charge can only be brought when two or more of these acts of crime are committed within a span of 10 years, establishing a "pattern of racketeering activity."

A decade after the RICO Act was established, Georgia introduced its own set of statutes to go with the federal law. State lawmakers hoped to address the "increasing sophistication of various criminal elements," according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution .

The statutes allow prosecutors to use the RICO Act with more flexibility, Redmon told Insider.

For example, in Georgia, the RICO Act can be used to charge one person, Redmon said. "It doesn't have to be a group of people."

The federal version of the law requires that there be two acts of racketeering within a 10-year span in order for prosecutors to bring the charges, while the Georgia RICO statute is not bound by the same time constraints.

Who has been charged with it lately?

Willis, who is a known fan of the prosecutorial device , previously indicated that her investigation was expansive and could include racketeering charges.

At the state level, Willis has indicted 35 Atlanta public school teachers, who are accused of falsifying standard test results. She has also used the statute against local gangs and in an ongoing 56-count RICO case against rapper Young Thug and others.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn built a successful RICO case against singer R. Kelly in June 2022 , when he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for orchestrating a ploy to engage in sex trafficking teenagers. The artist was the sole defendant in the trial.

How tough is it to prosecute?

In this case , experts previously told Insider that Georgia's more wide-ranging RICO statute could be both a blessing and a curse.

Election-related crimes such as forgery, influencing witnesses, and election fraud could be prosecuted alongside the RICO charge, Norm Eisen, a legal expert for the Brookings Institution previously told Insider in March.

"Georgia's RICO statute fits those facts like a glove," Eisen told Insider. "That's because the attempted coup DA Willis is investigating was a comprehensive assault on our democracy, and doing a larger case under RICO would better get at that and would achieve broad accountability against those responsible, above all Donald Trump."

The RICO charge would also carry up to a 20-year prison sentence on its own, making it one of the more severe charges. The charge can also streamline witness cooperation for those alleged to be part of the scheme.

The fact that the case is so politically charged could also hurt prosecutors, as Trump and allies have cast Willis as an over-eager prosecutor.

"I ultimately think bringing a narrower case under typical white-collar criminal statutes is the better choice," Eisen previously told Insider.

Watch: Donald Trump was indicted in New York. Here's what we know so far.

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