When you hear the word "law," you may assume the word refers to statutes passed by

Congress and state legislatures. But a major portion of American law actually is case law – the
rules appellate judges distill from their interpretation of statutes and other sources. Accordingly,
much of law school is spent learning how to analyze case law. However, attending law school
isn't strictly necessary to acquire this valuable skill. You can teach yourself how to analyze case
law, which begins – but doesn't end – with a thorough reading of the court's written opinion.

Part1
Summarizing the Facts
Read the case. You should read the case through at least once from beginning to end
until you attempt to figure out which facts are most important or analyze the court's
holding. It's difficult to correctly determine what was central to the court's reasoning until
you've read it all the way through.[1][2]
 The first time you read through a case, don't worry about trying to understand it. Just
read for a sense of what's happening, who the major parties are, and what they want
the court to do.
 Keep in mind that legal opinions aren't written for laypeople, or even for law students or
attorneys – they are written for other judges. If you don't understand something
(assuming you're not an appellate court judge), there's nothing wrong with that.
 You may have to go outside the opinion itself and look at other articles about the case,
and then come back to it. For example, if you're reading a case that caused quite a stir
in the media when it was decided, there will no doubt be newspaper and magazine
articles about it. Reading those can help you better understand the court opinion.
 Many cases have summaries that appear before the case and let you know the basics
of what happened, the issue before the court, and how the court resolved that issue.
The summary can be helpful, but don't use it as a substitute for an initial read-through of
the case.

Identify the parties. Figuring out who is suing whom may seem like the easiest part of
analyzing case law, and often it is. However, if a case has been through several layers
of appeal it can be difficult to discern how the case was originally presented.[3]
 To make party identification even more confusing, party names may switch sides of the
"v." in the case caption depending on who appealed. For example, suppose when a
case began, Sally Sunshine sued Marvin Moon. The case's caption would be "Sunshine
v. Moon." The trial court found in favor of Ms. Sunshine – but Mr. Moon appealed. The
caption then became "Moon v. Sunshine."
 To continue the example, suppose the appellate court found in favor of Mr. Moon, but
Ms. Sunshine appealed that ruling to a higher court. Now the case's caption is
"Sunshine v. Moon" again.
 Since litigants in written opinions typically are only identified by their roles – appellant
and appellee, for example – their names may only be mentioned once.

Outline the case's procedural history. Since all written court decisions involve a case
that has been through at least one if not several rounds of appeals, you must be able to
trace the path the case followed from the initial lawsuit through the court system to end
up before the court that issued the opinion you're reading.[4][5]
 Since the procedural history determines the role of the litigants, and thus what each of
them is called throughout the written opinion, understanding how the case moved
through the court system – who sued whom, and who appealed – is paramount to
understanding the case.
 At the same time, you don't need to go into too much detail here. You just need to
understand who filed the original lawsuit (which will help you understand the facts of the
case), the decision at trial, and who appealed and why.

Isolate the relevant facts. At the root of every case, there always is a story of a dispute
between two parties – but not all of the facts and circumstances surrounding this
dispute will be important to the holding of the case. To analyze case law, you must
determine which parts of the story are relevant to the issue presented to the court that
made the decision.[6][7][8]
 At the appellate level, the courts are concerned with legal issues, not questions of fact.
So, for example, if you are reading a case that came about as a result of a bar fight, the
factual question of whether one party assaulted the other has already been resolved.
 In many cases, the initial facts that prompted the dispute may be summarized in a
sentence or two. Often, what's really important is what happened afterward.
 Keep in mind that not all judges are the best writers. While you may be tempted to
believe a particular fact is important because the judge who wrote the opinion spent
several paragraphs discussing it, this is not necessarily the case.
 As you read more and more cases, particularly if the cases you read are focused on a
particular court, you will become familiar with the styles of individual judges. This can
make it easier for you to immediately notice when the judge is focusing on facts he or
she believes are central to the case's holding.
2
Part
 Identifying the Issue and Decision

Determine the legal issue raised by the facts. The core of case law analysis is
figuring out the exact issue or issues the court is being asked to resolve, and the
process by which the court resolved it.[9][10]
 Essentially, you're looking for what the person who appealed the lower court's ruling
wanted to happen, that didn't. To find the issue, you must figure out what that person
thought the lower court did wrong, and why.
 This usually isn't about something as simple as one person believing he should have
been awarded more money, or a criminal defendant not wanting to go to jail. That might
be part of an appellant's personal motivation, but to have a legitimate appeal you must
be able to point to some way that the lower court made a legal error.
 In many cases, the legal error isn't an obvious error. The lower court may have applied
the law correctly – but the appellant is arguing that her case is different from the cases
that developed the rule the lower court used, or that the lower court should have used a
different rule.
 Often in Supreme Court cases, there isn't a rule that can be handed down from previous
cases and applied in this case, because no court has ever decided a case like this one.
In these situations, it's up to the court to figure out how to tackle this new issue, and
where it fits in to the long line of American jurisprudence.

Phrase the issue as a yes/no question. The simplest way to understand a court's
reasoning and analysis of the legal issue before it is to create a question being asked of
the court, and phrase it in a way that it can be answered with a straight yes or no. [11][12]
 In some cases, the issue before the court involves multiple yes/no questions, or a
follow-up question that is conditional on the answer to the first.
 This usually happens when a particular factual situation present in the case has never
been explored by any other court. The court must first determine whether a particular
law applies to that factual situation at all before it can decide how the law applies.
 For example, suppose a baker has been fined by the local government for creating
cupcakes with expletives written in icing. The court may first have to determine whether
icing on cupcakes is the sort of speech or expression protected by the First
Amendment, before it can reach the real issue of whether the baker's First Amendment
rights have been violated.
 Provide the court's answer to the question. Since you've phrased your issue as a
question that can be answered yes or no, in most cases the court's answer will be one
of those words. However, some cases may have a more nuanced answer, such as
"maybe" or "sometimes."[13][14]
 Some judges have a very clear, straightforward writing style, and they'll phrase the
issue as a question and answer it directly. However, this isn't usually the case. In most
written opinions, you should expect to dig for the question and answer, which you'll have
to craft yourself.
 When more than one question is asked, sometimes the answer to the first takes care of
all the others. To look at the earlier cupcake-icing example, if the court had determined
that no, icing on cupcakes is not protected by the First Amendment, the second
question disappears. You don't have to consider whether the baker's First Amendment
rights were violated by the fine, because she didn't have any First Amendment rights in
the first place.
 When the answer is qualified with a "sometimes," any conditional questions that follow
likewise will have qualifications.
 #Note any significant dissents. In many cases,
particularly at the Supreme Court level, a justice who disagrees with the majority will
issue a dissent. As time passes and court interpretation evolves, a significant dissent
may end up being a majority opinion later on when the court reverses or overturns an
earlier decision.[15][16]
 There also may be concurrences, which are separate opinions written by justices who
agree with the ultimate outcome of the case, but not with the reasoning the majority
applied to get there. Often a concurrence can help you understand the majority's
reasoning, particularly if it seemed convoluted on first read.
 Unless you understand where the case you're reading falls in the history and
development of that particular area of law, you may not be able to recognize which
other opinions are important until you do further research.
 If you're unsure, it's best to simply note other opinions – be they dissents or
concurrences – and the key difference between them and the majority's opinion.
 Especially if you're reading a Supreme Court case, you also should note which justice
authored the dissent or concurrence. As justices leave the court and are replaced, the
values and judicial temperament of the majority also can change.
 A dissent from a decade ago may become a majority opinion tomorrow – often written
by the same justice, now carrying the majority where he or she once held a minority
view.
 Part3
Understanding the Reasoning
Identify the legal rules used by the court. The rules used by the court to apply the
law to a case's facts typically are precedents established by previous court decisions in
similar cases.[17]
 Make note of the case from which the rule came, although typically it's not necessary for
you to go back and read the case itself to understand the rule.
 However, if a significant portion of the opinion discusses the previous case, you may
want to go back and read it as well so you have a better understanding of what the court
is talking about.
 In some opinions (especially those penned by judges with straightforward writing
styles), the rule used by the court will follow trigger phrases such as "the rule we apply
is" or "we decide this case by applying the rule from" – phrases that alert you the court
is about to tell you exactly what rule they used.
 Most opinions won't be this direct, and require a closer analysis of the language to
ascertain the rule the court used. Sometimes you can figure this out by working
backwards. Read the court's decision, and then follow the court's train of logic in
reverse until you reach the rule.

Apply the rule to the facts of the case. The court typically applies related precedents
to the facts of the case at hand using analogy. Arguments from opposing sides at the
appellate level typically offer competing analogies, and sometimes argue that different
precedents should apply.[18][19]
 The application of a legal precedent to the facts of a case is the heart of legal analysis.
This typically is done using similes. Seldom has the exact issue been presented before
– to make a decision, the court must determine that this case is like a different case,
and therefore the same rule should apply.
 Keep in mind that, especially if you're analyzing a Supreme Court case, the court
wouldn't have accepted that case on appeal if it didn't present a new issue that had not
already been decided in an earlier case.
 For this reason, there likely won't be a precedent that is entirely on point, or a previous
case with the same fact pattern in which the same issue was raised and decided.
 Rather, the court must compare cases to find a rule that applies closely and is based on
a similar situation that is analogous to the dispute presented.
 Highlight facts the court found most important. Among the relevant facts you've
already identified, some will be more important than others because they represent the
reason the court chose one rule over another, or applied the rule in a particular way. [20]
 Sometimes the easiest way to locate the court's pivotal fact or facts is to consider what
would have happened if they'd chosen to focus on a different fact.
 For example, if the court in the case of the beleaguered baker had decided to focus on
the fact that cupcakes are food, and food has never been protected under the First
Amendment, it might have arrived at a different decision than it did. Because the court
focused instead on the fact that the baker wrote words with icing, just as writers write
words in ink, and concluded that written words inarguably enjoy First Amendment
protection.
 Although many other facts may be relevant, or important to some other aspect of the
case, those aren't the facts that made the court rule the way it did.
Consider how the rule would apply to different facts. Once you've mapped out how
the court arrived at its decision, imagine different (but similar) factual scenarios, and
apply the rule the case established to those facts to see what the result would be.[21]
 No court case exists in isolation. Once a court issues a decision, the legal interpretation
and rules it establishes become part of the larger body of law devoted to that particular
issue. Each opinion helps future courts understand more about the statute or
constitutional provision at the heart of the case.
 You don't have to wait for future courts to apply the rule you've just learned to other
cases, however. Take the facts in the original case and twist them slightly, then apply
the rule yourself.
 Law professors call these imaginary cases "hypotheticals," and spend a good portion of
class churning them out and asking their students to apply the rule they've learned to
sometimes bizarre and convoluted stories.
Case Analysis-The Patna Case
The Patna Case[1]is one of the very interesting case in the field of Indian History. The Patna Case
took place in years of 1777, 1778 and 1779. The Patna Case took eminent place in the Indian legal
history because it had reveled the of the system judicial administration. This case brought the light
on the involving conflict and disatification among the Supreme court and the supreme council. This
case had made as the lesson learned that had became the basis of the more further reorganization
or reorientation in the operation or management of justice that will taken in future.

Facts of The Case:

v Shahbaz Beg Khan belonged to KABUL and came to India and joined a company Army and then
he got retired. After that he earned extensive riches and settled at Patna and married one Nadirah
Begum.
v Since, he called his nephew Bahadur beg from Kabul to live with him.He additionally
communicated his longing to adopt Bahadur Beg as his son and make him the heir of his property
and then to retire from the world.
v But before he could give impact to his wish, he died in December, 1776.
v Shahbaz Beg left impressive property behind him which led to battle for property between and the
nephew. Each one of them claimed the whole property of the expired.
v Bahadur Beg (the Nephew) filed a petition the Provincial Council at Patna, asserting the property in
the limit of being the adopted son the deceased. He also requested the court to protect the property
from being abused by the widow of the deceased. The Nadirah Begum designates the
Mohammedan Native Law officers i.e. Mufti and Kazi to find out his claim in the property.

v The widow Nadirah Begum,then again, asserted her claim to the said property on the basis of
three documents are:
Dower – Deed (Meharnama)
Gift – Deed (Hibanama)
Acknowledgment (Ikrarnama)

v The Provincial Court of Patna directed the Kazi and Mufti set up a stock of the property and gather
and seal it till an official choice. These native law officers were also to report to the Court about the
separate claims of the parties after ascertaining the facts of the case.

v In compatibility of the Provincial Council's orders, the Kazi and Mufti went house of the deceased
and gathered the property and took stock of it.

v During the investigation they abused Nadirah Begum as a result of which, she left the house and
took shelter in a "Durgah".

v The methodology followed by the law –officers in this case was most irregular. After inquiry the
case they defer their report to the Patna Council. on the basis of evidence, the Kazi reported on
January 20, 1777, that widow's agent (counsel) had neglected to deliver the dower deed in this
manner, there was nothing invalidate the attestations of Bahadur Beg that the sum of Rs.1200/- as
dower was already paid by the deceased to Nadirah Begum during his life- time. As respects the
other two documents , namely, the gift-deed and acknowledgment-deed, the law-officers
recommended that they were invalid being forged and, therefore, the property of the deceased
should be divided into four shares,out of which three should be given to Bahadur Beg as illustrative
of his dad in India and the fourth offer ought to be go Nadirah Begum in accordance with the
Mohammedan Law of succession.

v The Provincial Council of Patna acknowledged the report of the Kazi and Mufti and requested the
division of the property in like manner. in any case, aggrieved by the decision of the Provincial
Council,Nadirah Begum favored an interest to Sadar Diwani Adalat at Calcutta which comprised
Governor – General and Council be that as it may, the interest stayed pending for quite a while with
no activity.subsequently the dowager brought an activity against Bahadur Beg, Kazi and Mufti for
assault, battery , false imprisonment and penetrate coercively into her house and other secret
injuries and allege damages to the chorus of rupees six lakhs.

v Issues of The Case:

v Whether Bahadur Beg, who lived outside calcutta was exposed to the administration of Supreme
Court or not.
v whether the law officer's could be litigated or indicted for their acts done during their legal
proficiency or not.

Judgement of The Case:

The court censured the way in which the Kazi and Mufti had represented determining realities.All the
procedure in the board were ex-parte with no I see being given to the begum. no normal preliminary
was held and witnesses had not been analyzed on oath. Thus, the law officers were attempted not
for what they had done in the release of their customary capacity ,however to something outside
thereto the court had an undoubted ward over the organization hirelings.

The Supreme Court granted harms of Rupees 3 Lakhs to the dowager which was very in
proportionate.

Analysis of The Case:

An impartial examination of the case demonstrates that gross anomalies were conferred by the
commonplace committee in giving this case.the law officer were just to elucidate the law and choose
question of certainty yet the court found that they were endowed with the whole work of examination.
They ought not have analyzed the witnesses themselves as this was crafted by the judge of the
common gathering.

The Patna case additionally uncovered the shortcomings of the organization legal organization
,especially that of the sadar diwani adalat at calcutta in light of the fact that the senator general and
the individual from the gathering, who constituted the court barely had whenever to take care of the
legal work of choosing claims as they were for the most part possessed with different works and
avenging their shared competitions.
As respects the ward of the preeminent court over the Mohammedan local law officers, it was held
that these officers being in the administration of the organization , the court had purview over them.
this view has all the earmarks of being right. be that as it may, the preeminent courts dispute that it
additionally had ward over Bahadur ask who was an agriculturist of land income of the organization
and henceforth a worker of the organization , does not have all the earmarks of being right. the
supreme courts choice in Patna case holding that an agriculturist of land income was to be dealt with
in the administration of the organization and consequently fell inside the ward of the court, made
dread and frenzy among the local ranchers of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. along these lines this case
had an adverse affected the income winning of the organization in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. the
weaknesses of the organization of the incomparable court and the preeminent committee which
became known through the Patna Case were, anyway , evacuated by the death of the Act of
Settlement in 1781.

Act of Settlement In 1781

The demonstration was passed to cure the deformities of Regulating Act of 1773 as the Government
was confronting difficulties in the assignment of gathering income . The preface of the Act Stated:
'though it is practical the legal Government of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa ought to be bolstered,'
Therefore the Act made arrangements which were more positive to the Governor general and the
Council will not together and severally be Subject to the ward of the Supreme Court for any
demonstration done by them in their official limit. The most essential arrangement from the
perspective of Hindus and Mohammedans was Section 17,which expressed that 'all issue emerging
out of legacy and progression to land and products and matters of agreements be resolved by
individual laws of the separate gatherings'. assist limitation were put by the Act on the ward of the
Supreme Court to engage any issue concerning income or concerning any demonstrations done in
the accumulation of income there by giving full insurance to the Government in income matters. All
zamindars , arrive holders and agriculturists who paid land in come to the Government were put out
ward .But the incomparable Court was enabled to have purview in activities for wrong or trespass
and in common situations when parties had concurred in writing to submit for their situation to the
Supreme Court willfully . The demonstration offered acknowledgment to the Company's court to be
specific, Sadar Diwani and Fauzdari Adalat and gave the sadar Diwani Adalat (Governor and
Council) will be a re-appraising Court to Hear claims from the choice of the Mofussil Courts in
common cases. Its judgment were to be last upto Rs.5000/ - yet in the event that the topic was, of
Rs.5000/ - or increasingly a further interest was given to the committee. In this manner the
organization's courts were expedited an indistinguishable balance from that of Supreme Court. The
critical of this arrangement can be judged in the light of the choice given by the Supreme Court in the
Patna Case. It was nullification of the approach received by the Court all things considered which
influenced unfavorably the lesson of the legal officers of the Company's court.

ultimately, before the Act of 1781 the Supreme Court was meddling in the working of the Mofussil
Court set up by the Company to direct equity among the people dwelling in the Mofussil territories
situated outside the city of Calcutta.

Conclusion
Patna Case is one of the eminent cases in the subject of legal history of India. It has provided us
with the knowledge that during the performance of any duty or authority given to any legal official
should be exercised or conducted within the ambit of their specified field. This case has also dealt
with such situation in which the officials were authorized by the court of law to investigate into the
matter of Nadirah Begum and Bahadur Beg to find out the documents and other related information
to the case, but during this procedure the officials i.e Kazi and Mufti conducted bad behavior towards
Nadirah Begum while entering her house and performance of assault, battery and false
imprisonment. Accordingly by seeing all this Supreme Court gave the judgement in favor of Nadirah
Begum and these officials were charged with the Punishment of imprisonment along with the fine of
Rs. 3 Lakhs to Nadirah Begum. Over all this mishaps, Supreme Court gave the right decision/
verdict that had maintained the trust of citizens in judiciary.

End-Notes
[1] (1777-79)