Judgepedia:Editing articles about court opinions and lawsuits
From Judgepedia
| Writing articles |
|---|
|
| Writing tips |
| About judges About state judicial decisions State appellate judges Federal judges Help Desk • Cheatsheet Style guidelines • Discussions |
| Community • Tool box |
This page is about editing articles on Judgepedia about lawsuits and court cases. If you've found an article on Judgepedia about a lawsuit, legal opinion or court case that would benefit from additional editing, expansion, explanation and elaboration, but you're not sure where to go with the article, read on.
Two types of improvement
You can edit an article about a lawsuit, opinion or court case either for style, or because the article could benefit from additional information and perspective.
Editing for style
There's a recommended format for writing about court cases and lawsuits. See: How to write case analysis.
Recommended parts of the article include:
- Introduction: The first several sentences of the article include the name of the case in bold, and give the date of the ruling, and the name of the court from whence the ruling issued.
- Area of Law Statement: This section is centered directly under the "Case Name" and states the area of law, the sub-issue of the law, and the specific issue. An example would be: "Contract Enforcement-Personal Injury-Uninsured motorist" and this refers to a case that is broadly about contract enforcement, involves a personal injury claim, and is specifically related to uninsured motorists.
- Issue: This section will in 1-2 sentences describe the issue at hand in the case. An example would be: "Is violation of the no-knock entry rule a basis to suppress evidence?"
- Summary/Analysis: This section describes how the judge ruled on the case in question, the ruling of the court, and the reasoning of the court. An example of this would be: "Justice X, over the dissents of Justices Y and Z, ruled that an insurance company was not required to pay an uninsured motorist claim because an axle-wheel assembly separated from an unidentified semi-trailer does not constitute a "motor vehicle," and therefore, does not fall within the terms of the policy and the Texas Insurance Code. The Court held: (1) motor vehicles are self-propelled (2) the collision does not involve a legally recognized substitute for the statute's actual physical contact requirement (3) adopting an integral part test to determine whether actual physical contact occurred would be inconsistent with the test established by the legislature and would be unmanageable
It is important to note that with respect to the Summary in particular, this work has largely been done and doesn't require original writing. In most cases, some form of this summary already exists, even if it isn't as readily accessible as in format 2.0.
