One of your brief’s most important jobs is showing the court that the law that supports your argument is valid and that the law that supports your opponent’s argument is either invalid or not on point.

The previous chapter addressed how to discuss your arguments and your opponent’s arguments. This chapter addresses how to include case authority — the authority used most frequently in briefs — in the most effective way possible.

To use case authorities most effectively, you must keep both your reader and your user in mind: The brief should include enough information about the cases cited so that any reader can understand their significance. In addition, it must include citations in a way that allows them to be found easily by the user, who may be trying to find the relevant authorities so that he or she can review them and assess their validity.

The practical brief writer should assume, however, that none of his or her readers will read anything other than the brief itself before deciding the case. Admittedly, at least the judge who writes the opinion, or his or her law clerk, will probably look up each cited case and review it to test whether it adequately supports your argument. Some readers may conduct additional research to further test the validity of the parties’ arguments. Because the audience for an appellate brief includes all of the judges who will be voting, however, and because not every judge will have time to consult outside authorities, your brief should include enough information to be useful to those who want to go beyond it, but to be understandable and credible to those who do not.

With these concerns in mind, brief writers need to pay attention to several different aspects of using case authority: (1) they must provide the reader with an appropriate amount of information about the cases they do cite; (2) they must use quotations effectively; (3) they must use language precisely when they are analogizing and distinguishing cases; (4) they must use unpublished decisions properly; and (5) they must use citations in a way that makes it easy for the judge or the judge’s clerk to verify the validity of the rules and authorities in the argument.