McWane, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission.
I. Title and Citation: List the name of the case, the citation listed in text, and the year.
II. Procedural History: Briefly describe the history of the case by stating the state in which the
case originated, the appellate court to which the appeal was sent, any subsequent appellate courts,
and end with the court from which the opinion in the text is taken.
III. Summary of Facts: The facts are usually distilled by the appellate court and then shortened
by the text author. In this section, you need to present the relevant facts necessary to understand
the “story line” and pertinent to the issue(s) raised. Make sure that you write it in such a way that
not only you understand it, but that someone reading it without knowledge of the case can
understand the case enough to discuss the issues. This can be difficult as everything seems
important, although it is not all relevant. You should strive to put it in your own words.
IV. Issues: The case will usually explicitly state the issues before the court. However, not all
issues are relevant to the topic the text is attempting to explicate. Select the relevant issues and
list them separately in one sentence/question each.
V. Holding: While the holding may be distilled down to as little as one word – affirmed,
reversed, affirmed in part and reversed in part, and or remanded – you should state what the
holding means in one sentence. For example, do not simply write “affirmed,” but rather
“Affirmed. The statute is void for vagueness.” Recall that this part can be a bit tricky as the
holdings = may change as the case travels from the decision of the trial court through the
appellate courts and the final court holding applies to the court’s holding that immediately
precedes the final court in the text. (See procedural history.)
VI. Opinion/Reasoning: This may be the most difficult part of writing a case brief as the
reasoning in the court’s opinion will often go “back and forth” and refer to other cases throughout
making it a bit laborious to cut through all of the dicta. It is your job to distill the reasoning down
court’s holding on a particular issue. In fact, lawyers address issues that have been previously
raised by differentiating a case from the ones that are apparently the “rule of law” at the time.