CASE METHOD
A system of instruction or study of law focused
upon the analysis of court opinions rather than
lectures and textbooks; the predominant method
of teaching in U.S. law schools today.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS LANGDELL, a law
professor, often receives credit for inventing the
case method although historians have found
evidence that others were teaching by this
method before him. Regardless, Langdell by all
accounts popularized the case method.
Langdell viewed the law as a science and
believed that it should be studied as a science.
Law, he said, consists of certain principles or doctrines. To
have such a mastery of these as to be able to
apply them with constant facility and cer-
tainty to the ever-tangled skein of human
affairs, is what constitutes a true lawyer; and
hence to acquire that mastery should be the
business of every earnest student of law.
Each doctrine, Langdell said, arrived at its
present state by slow degrees, growing and
extending through centuries. Langdell’s beliefs
differed from those of his law professor col-
leagues. Throughout the 1800s, the prevalent
approach for teaching law school classes was the
lecture method. Although professors and text-
books interpreted the meaning of various court
decisions, they did not offer a significant oppor-
tunity for students to do so on their own. The
case method, on the other hand, forced students
to read, analyze, and interpret cases themselves.
It was Langdell’s opinion that law students
would be better educated if they were asked to
reach their own conclusions about the meaning
of judicial decisions.
Langdell’s ideas were, at first, overwhelm-
ingly rejected by students, other law professors,
and attorneys alike. These critics viewed the case
method as chaotic compared with organized lec-
tures. They believed that instead of soliciting law
students’ opinions regarding cases, professors
should simply state their own interpretations.
Law students, afraid that they were not learning
from Langdell’s method, dropped out of his
class, leaving him with only a few pupils. Enroll-
ment in the Harvard Law School decreased dra-
matically because of concern over Langdell’s
case method and alumni called for his dismissal.
But the president of Harvard University,
Charles W. Eliot, supported Langdell and his
case method. This backing allowed Langdell to
withstand the criticism long enough to prove
the case method’s success: Langdell’s students
were becoming capable, skilled attorneys. In
1870 Langdell became law school dean. As time
passed he replaced his critics on the Harvard faculty with professors who believed in his system of teaching and the case method soon
became the dominant teaching method at Harvard.
Other U.S. law schools took note. By the
early 1900s, most had adopted the case method,
and it remained the primary method of legal
instruction throughout the twentieth century
and beyond.
The case method is usually coupled with a
type of classroom teaching called the Socratic
method. Through the Socratic method students
orally respond to an often difficult series of
questions designed to help them gain further
insight into the meaning of the law. Students
learn the skill of critical analysis this way: they
learn to discern relevant from irrelevant facts;
they learn to distinguish between seemingly
similar facts and issues; and they learn to analogize
between dissimilar facts and issues.
The case method offers certain benefits. For
one, cases are usually interesting. They involve
real parties with real problems and therefore
tend to stimulate students more than do textbooks
with only hypothetical problems.
The case method also helps students develop
the ability to read and analyze cases, which is a
crucial skill for attorneys. Students learn to
reduce cases to four basic components: the facts
of the controversy; the legal issue that the court
decides; the holding, or legal resolution, that the
court reaches; and the reasoning that the court
uses to explain its decision. Students, especially
in their first year of legal study, often outline
these components in written case briefs, to
which they can refer during classes and while
they prepare for exams.
Another advantage of the case method is
that it teaches, by example, the system of legal
precedence. By reading cases, students learn how
and why judges adhere, or do not adhere, to law
developed in previous cases. Students also learn
how judges have the discretion to create law by
construing statutes or constitutions.
The case method continues to have critics.
One criticism focuses on law school examinations.
Typically, law students are tested only once
in each class. They face enormous pressure to
perform well on this examination since their
single score on it usually constitutes their entire
grade for the class. It is difficult to test analysis
skills, so often these examinations test the students’
ability to spot legal issues and apply legal
rules. Therefore, although professors try to teach
case analysis skills, students tend to focus on
simply learning RULES OF LAW in the hope of
getting good grades. This diminishes the case
method’s intended result.
The case method may be unpopular with
law students owing to the amount of reading it
requires. It is not uncommon for law professors
to assign twenty to thirty pages of reading, containing
excerpts from four or five cases, each
night for each class. Some law professors have
argued that pupils learn to analyze cases within
the first few months of law school, and that
thereafter the case method becomes ineffective
because students lose enthusiasm and interest in
reading cases.
Another complaint concerns the role of casebooks.
Casebooks commonly contain cases or
case excerpts as well as some explanatory text.
They are most often compiled by law professors,
who arrange the cases to show legal development
or illustrate the meaning of legal principles. These
casebooks provide only a small sample of cases,
the vast majority of them appellate-level decisions.
Thus, law students usually receive little or
no exposure to decisions of trial courts. Some
commentators suggest that students therefore
miss critical elements of a lawyer’s initial role: discovering
and shaping facts and determining legal
strategies to present to the court at the trial level.
Frequently, students do not see legal conflicts
in their undeveloped form until they graduate
and begin practicing law. Law schools
increasingly are trying to remedy that problem
by offering instruction in basic lawyering skills.
For example, classes in trial advocacy allow students
to conduct mock jury trials. Other courses
teach client-counseling skills, document-drafting
skills, and oral argument skills. The idea is
not to abandon the case method entirely but to
balance it with other teaching methods.
FURTHER READINGS
Marks, Thomas C., Jr. 2000. “Understanding the Process of
Judicial Policymaking Through Case Analysis.” Stetson
Law Review 29 (spring): 1155–80.
Rand, Joseph W. 2003. “Understanding Why Good Lawyers
Go Bad: Using Case Studies in Teaching Cognitive Bias
in Legal Decision-Making.”Clinical Law Review 9
(spring): 731–82.
Weaver. 1991. “Langdell’s Legacy: Living with the Case
Method.” Villanova Law Review 36.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Case Law; Court Opinion; Legal Education; Precedent.
