Cases refers in this title to written
judicial opinions, in which are to be found the reasons given by judges for
the application of law to a dispute
Legal
education in the United States has been based for over a century on studying
judicial decisions recorded by state and federal courts. In most instances the
decisions, or cases, used for study are rendered by the appellate courts (courts
of appeals, supreme courts) since these form a body of law known as the 'common
law,' and serve as precedents for future cases. The cases in this text are abbreviated
versions of actually decisions and are overshadowed in the text by the 'commentary.'
In Law school text, the cases form the substance of the text and commentary
is largely concerned with footnotes and annotations to the cases.
The
casebook method of teaching the law was started in the 1880 by Dean Langdell
of Harvard Law School, who felt that the method of expounding on the law through
erudite lectures was an ineffective way of training lawyers. He collected
numerous cases on on contracts in a casebook, which has served as a
model to this day, notwithstanding many critics of this method.