A COMPREHENSIVE BRIEF / TUTORIALOUTLET DOT COM A COMPREHENSIVE BRIEF / TUTORIALOUTLET DOT COM | Page 3

For example, the famous case of Brown v. Board of Education
involved the applicability of a provision of the 14th Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution to a school board‟s practice of excluding black
pupils from certain public schools solely due to their race. The precise
wording of the Amendment is “no state shall... deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The careful
student would begin by identifying the key phrases from this
amendment and deciding which of them were really at issue in this
case. Assuming that there was no doubt that the school board was
acting as the State, and that Miss Brown was a “person within its
jurisdiction,” then the key issue would be “Does the exclusion of
students from a public school solely on the basis of race amount to a
denial of „equal protection of the laws‟?”
Of course the implications of this case went far beyond the situation
of Miss Brown, the Topeka School Board, or even public education.
They cast doubt on the continuing validity of prior decisions in which
the Supreme Court had held that restriction of Black Americans to
“separate but equal” facilities did not deny them “equal protection of
the laws.” Make note of any such implications in your statement of
issues at the end of the brief, in which you set out your observations
and comments.
NOTE: More students misread cases because they fail to see the
issues in terms of the applicable law or judicial doctrine than for any
other reason. There is no substitute for taking the time to frame
carefully the questions, so that they actually incorporate the key
provisions of the law in terms capable of being given precise
answers. Remember too, that the same case may be used by different
instructors for different purposes, so part of the challenge of briefing
is to identify those issues in the case which are of central importance
to the topic under discussion in class.
4. Decisions
The decision, or holding, is the court‟s answer to a question presented
to it for answer by the parties involved or raised by the court itself in
its own reading of the case. There are narrow procedural holdings, for