How does the Supreme Court make decisions using prior decisions and precedent

By: Jack Ryan

I began my creative project with the idea that I would be able to memorize the facts, questions, rulings, and opinions of roughly 30-50 cases. That was, perhaps, a little ambitious. I re-evaluated my final project on December 1st, realized my grave error, and slightly altered the course. I downsized to 10 cases, and I picked them by starting with the most recent Supreme Court case, reading the opinion, and picking a random citation. I had very little criteria for what went into my selection process – in some cases (such as Abbott), I picked the most cited case (Ewing), and in other opinions, I picked a case only mentioned once.

I felt uneasy about downsizing the total cases I would be analyzing, so I tried to really go in-depth on every case I chose and understand every aspect of it. I picked my ten cases on December 5th and spent a few hours each day for the next week or so reading fully through the opinions of each case and surfing the web for information about each case. I made a document that contains the information for every case I compiled, including the facts of the case, the question before the court, the ruling and opinion reasoning, and how the court cited the prior case. Over the course of that week, compiling all the information took roughly 9-10 hours of research.

I planned to shoot the video explaining everything on the 18th and underestimated how time-consuming it would be. I thought I had a very strong grasp on each case, but as I was recording the video, I realized that I was often stumbling for words and could not outline my thoughts as clearly as I wanted. I had to stop the video eight times over the course of the 40-minute recording to gather my thoughts, check a fact, or whatnot.

But the biggest time killer, and mistake that I made, was thinking I would have a strong knowledge of all 10 cases after not having visited them for a week. So I arrived at the room I would film in at 3 PM, and to refresh my knowledge of the topics, I hand wrote everything I knew of the case down on paper before I began filming, which took a couple of hours. The actual recording of the video took roughly four hours, where I often would not be satisfied with how I discussed a case and would restart. I would practice how I discussed a case out loud, then practiced two cases together, and kept expanding until I had a solid hold on explaining 4-5 cases without a break.