Case Study

RIGHT OF THE ACCUSED TO TRIAL BY JURY
Duncan v. Louisiana
Case Study: Five Easy Steps
Worksheet

Case Study - Five Easy Steps

The case study approach is a law-related education teaching strategy which uses real and hypothetical legal cases to help students develop critical thinking skills. In its complete form, it includes the following elements:

Identifying the facts of the case;
Defining the legal and/or constitutional question;
Formulating arguments for both sides of the question;
Explaining the court's decision and the reasons of the majority and the dissent; and
Evaluating the court's decision and predicting the impact of the court's decision.

There are many different instructional strategies that can be used with these elements, including individual, small group, and whole-class processes.

1. Identifying the Facts of the Case

Students begin by reading, listening to, or viewing a description of the facts of the case. One useful and efficient method for ensuring that students understand the facts is to put them in pairs. Then ask one student in each pair to summarize the facts. The question, "What happened in this case?" is a good prompt for the summarizer.

Another technique involves having students work in groups on the following questions:

What happened in this case?
Who are the people/organizations/companies involved?
What motives could explain why the people involved acted as they did?
How did the lower courts rule on this case? (Note: This question should only be asked if the case is on appellate review.)
Which facts are important?
What facts don't you have that you would like?

As a general rule, it is important to check for students' understanding of the facts before they work on the other elements. A quick whole-class discussion of the facts can clear up misunderstandings and reinforce the work done by the students in pairs or groups.

2. Defining the Constitutional and/or Legal Question

It is important for students to understand what constitutional and/or legal question the court must address in the case, or it will be difficult for them to understand the implications of the court's decision. Defining constitutional and/or legal questions is often very difficult. In many instances, you may decide simply to give your students the question.

However, if you want students to define the issue themselves, the following four questions is most useful for constitutional cases that involve state action:

Who was the actor? (Who did something?)
Who was the recipient of the action? (To whom was it done?)
What was the action that caused the controversy? (What was done?)
What specific part of the Constitution/statute is involved?

For example, in Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969), students appealed their suspension from school because they wore black armbands to school to protest the nation's involvement in Vietnam. In this case, the answers would be:

actor = Des Moines Board of Education
recipients = Tinker students
action = suspended from school for wearing the armbands
part of Constitution = free speech clause of the First Amendment

Once the students have answered these questions, they should develop a question the court must address. The question should include all four components named above. For example, in Tinker, the constitutional issue before the Supreme Court was:

"Did the Board of Education (actor) violate the First Amendment free speech rights (part of Constitution) of the Tinker students (recipient of action) when they suspended them from school for wearing black armbands (action)?"

Ask the students to phrase the question to elicit a "yes" or "no" response. For Tinker, "yes" would be a ruling for the students, while "no" would be a ruling for the Board of Education.

3. Formulating Arguments for Both Sides of the Question

One way to begin this step is to have the students identify the values and goals of each side. Rarely is a case strictly about good versus bad. More often, legal cases involve significant conflicts between competing positive values, such as private property rights versus equality.

The constitutional and/or legal question that the students develop provides a good starting point for the process of developing arguments. Students can be asked to formulate and evaluate reasons in support of both "yes" and "no" answers to the question. Any number of standard law-related education interactive strategies, such as moot court simulations, are useful ways to help students evaluate the reasons they develop.

Before students learn about how the court decided and its reasons, ask them to predict what they think the court will do and why.

4. Explaining Court's Decision and Reasons

The first thing to focus on at this step is the court's answer to the constitutional/legal question(s). For example, in Tinker, the Supreme Court ruled that the students' constitutional rights had been violated by the Board of Education. It is also important to discuss what geographical areas will be affected by the decision. If the case was decided by the United Sates Supreme Court, then it will apply to the entire nation. However, few cases are heard by the Supreme Court and most decisions will affect a smaller area.

By identifying and evaluating the court's reasons for its decision, students will be able to compare and contrast those reasons with their own.

5. Evaluating a Decision and Predicting Its Impact

The final step in the case study approach involves reacting, often on a very personal level, to the decision of the court. Especially in cases that are significant and controversial, students both want and need the opportunity to discuss what they think about the court's decision. How does/will the decision affect them and others? Additionally, asking students to predict the impact of court decisions often leads to discussion of actions by other branches of government. Many court cases can be effectively overturned by a change in a statute or policy.

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