4.1.4 USING AREVERSEROADMAP TOSTRUCTUREYOUR ARGUMENT
Another method of identifying structure is to create an outline in paragraph form. Start with the ultimate point that you want the court to agree with, and then ask yourself what point or points the court must agree with to agree with that point, moving in reverse until you are at the smallest part of any test you might ask a court to apply.
This method is more complicated because as you write the reverse roadmap paragraph, you must already have in mind some relationships between and among your points. The method might result in several branching paragraphs rather than just one. For example, if you were working on Miller v. Albright, the case described previously, part of your reverse roadmap outline might look like this:This court should reverse the decision below. In order to decide to reverse, it has to agree that 1409 is unconstitutional. In order to agree that 1409 is unconstitutional, the court either has to agree that 1409 violates the intermediate scrutiny test or that it violates the rational basis test.
In order to agree that 1409 violates the intermediate scrutiny test, the court first has to agree that the intermediate scrutiny test applies. In order to agree that the intermediate scrutiny test applies, the court has to agree that the statute discriminates on the basis of gender.
The court would also have to agree that this is not an immigration statute, so the court doesn’t have to defer to Congress and therefore apply an easier test, OR it has to agree that even if the statute is an immigration statute, the fact that it discriminates on the basis of gender is more significant.
Now, in order to agree that the statute violates the intermediate scrutiny test, the court has to agree both that there’s no substantial relationship between the discrimination in the statute and the achievement of the government’s goals and that there’s no exceedingly persuasive justification for the statute.
In order to agree that it violates the rational basis test, the court first has to agree that this test is the correct test to apply, which means that the court thinks that immigration law is more important than gender law. In order to agree that 1409 violates the rational basis test, it first has to agree that Congress had no rational reason for the law.
It might help the court to agree that 1409 is unconstitutional if it agrees that biological parent-child relationships are important, or that reuniting parents and children is important, or that children should not suffer adverse consequences for the acts of their parents or the status of their parents.
As with the “list of assertions” method, this method might be more effective with pen and paper than with a computer. If you want to pick up a paragraph and move it around or draw lines connecting two or more paragraphs with each other, you may be better off with hard copy than digital copy. A reverse roadmap outline might be complete enough to let you start writing, or it may be a method you can combine with other methods to help you draft a working outline.