How to read a court decision

Court decisions are public documents, and more of them are freely available online than ever. Yet most people meet them only through a headline: court rules against government. The decision itself is rarely read. It should be, and it is less forbidding than it looks.

Find the question

Every judgment answers a question, and the first task is to find it. It is often narrower than the news suggests. A court may not have decided whether a policy is good, or even whether it is lawful in general, but only whether a particular procedure was followed in a particular case.

Separate the holding from the reasoning

The holdingHoldingThe part of a judgment that decides the legal question before the court and binds the parties.↗ is what the court decided. The reasoningReasoningThe explanation a court gives for its decision; later courts and commentators argue mostly about this part.↗ is why. Both matter, but differently. The holding binds the parties. The reasoning is what later courts, lawyers and citizens will argue about — and it frequently contains limits that the holding alone does not reveal.

The holding is what the court decided. The reasoning is why — and it often contains the limits.

Read the dissent

Where judges disagree, the dissenting opinionDissentAn opinion written by a judge who disagrees with the majority. It does not change the outcome but records the disagreement.↗ is often the clearest statement of what was really at stake. It can also be a message to the future: some dissents have later become the law.

Four questions to ask

1. What exactly was the court asked to decide?
2. What facts did it treat as established?
3. What rule did it apply, and where did the rule come from?
4. What did it expressly not decide?

A reader who can answer those four questions knows more about the case than most of the coverage it receives.