translation studies. retrospective and prospective views

of years. It is the fundamental theory of the entire Anglo-Saxon legal
system that once a case is decided, if there should ever be another case in
the future that is the same as the decided case, that future case should be
decided exactly the same way as the first case was decided. This is called
stare decisis. In other words, the opinion effectively establishes a rule that is
to be followed in the future for all similar cases. Moreover, since all of the
opinions over the past hundreds of years have been saved, they can always
be located and used as a basis to resolve a current legal dispute.
The Common Law is the result of the collection of hundreds of years
of written decisions by appellate courts in England before the United States
was formed. The United States adopted the Common Law and it is the
basis of our legal system. Thus, a case, for purposes of this definition, is a
written appellate court opinion which reviews the decision of a lower court
and is, accordingly, now the “Law of the Land” according to the doctrine of
stare decisis. In Anglo-Saxon law school, a student will study the
aforementioned collection of appellate court opinions because they are “the
law.”
A “brief” is nothing more than a summary of an appellate court
opinion. A brief is a written synopsis or digest. It is just a concise
rendering or explanation of the opinion. The primary job of a law student
is to brief (i.e., summarize) cases.
III. Title and Citation
The title of the case shows who is opposing whom. The name of the
person who initiated legal action in that particular court will always appear
first.
IV. Facts of the Case
A good student brief will include a summary of the pertinent facts
and legal points raised in the case. It will show the nature of the litigation,
who sued whom, based on what occurrences, and what happened in the
lower courts. Thus the student combines the juridical information with
writing techniques, going through the new vocabulary. Pre-reading is the
first step to take, it consists of reading the case name; read the first paragraph or
two to understand who the parties are and the issue that brought them to court;
(most cases will give the procedural history, parties and issues in the first
two paragraphs.); reading the first sentence of each paragraph; (by reading
every topic sentence of every paragraph the student should get an idea of
the structure and general direction that the case is going towards.); reading
the last paragraph or two so that the student could understand the holding and
disposition of the case.
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