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1 Introduction Nearly all countries have a hidden history of which they, for very good reasons, are not proud. That history is very infrequently mentioned in the national media but is referenced enough for the occurrence of these key events to be beyond dispute.1.1 The Major Reason Why The United Kingdom Has A Hidden HistoryThe United Kingdom is a nation which has fully implemented the baleful predictions of Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, that isfirst, the country has been entirely taken over by monied interestssecond, that this takeover of the UK Government by the rich (their greatest lobbyists) was a natural evolutionary development of western economies and in Spengler’s view was both inevitable and irresistibly unavoidablethird, that all of the nation’s privately-owned and government-controlled media would become utterly compliant in accepting and promoting that take-over and useless and incapable of objectively reporting on events or providing accurate information, andfourth, Spengler stated that there is a tendency for nations which have been taken over by monied interests to fall under the control of politically inept but monied “Caesars” who have minimal competence in running the country but who nonetheless gain a political power despite lacking the capability to govern effectively in the national interest.All of these results have happened in both the UK and the USA. SeeSee Do you see any merit in Oswald Spengler's claim that "The Decline of the West" is fast approaching? andGeorge Tait Edwards's answer to What are your thoughts on the 20th century, German philosopher Oswald Spengler and his theory on the decline of the West?2 Definition: Items of hidden history are developments which encompass three major effects: these area hidden history item partially explains recent events (such as election or referendum results)the British Media while mentioning these changes in a very minor way do not recognise their explanatory effect in altering the course of history and ignores the relevance of these changes upon continuing political developments, andthe population of the United Kingdom have become almost completely uninformed about how major recent significant events have come about and about how the economic development of the country and its social policies are the inevitable consequence of their hidden history.Let’s examine these situations in more detail3 Recent Major Hidden Historical Events There appear to be six major factors in the recent hidden history of Britain. These arethe destruction of a fully-functioning British democracy byMargaret Thatcher’s 1992 Poll Tax andthe application of David Cameron’s Individual Electoral Registration Act 2013the 1992 election of John Major due to absence of Poll-Tax avoiding previous votersthe election of David Cameron in May 2015 due to the partisan reduction of non-Conservative previous voters through the Coalition Government’s implementation of the Individual Electoral Registration Act 2013the BREXIT result which was brought about by the removal of at least eight million previous voters from the parliamentary electoral rollsthe destruction of the NHS as an accessible public service due to the redefinition of doctor’s GP services as emergency services and the almost complete conversion of nearly all NHS hospitals and facilities into cash-limited semi-privatised hospital and health service trusts focused on cost saving rather than services to patientsthe destruction by the Government of the social contract and living standards of the poorest sections of British societyAll of these developments have their consequences, which are continuing to affect the political development and basic characteristics of the UK. It may be useful to illustrate these events in turn.3 Scale of these itemsNone of these items is trivial. Each of these was enough to produce results which were, for example, in direct opposition to the opinion polls.3.1 The destruction of a fully-functioning British democracy by Margaret Thatcher’s Poll Tax in Scotland in 1989 and In England and Wales in 1990See Poll tax (Great Britain) - WikipediaThe piloting of the Poll Tax in Scotland, which was suggested and supported by Oliver Letwin who was a member of Thatcher’s Cabinet, ultimately resulted in over half the Scottish Electorate receiving a notice of failure to pay the Poll Tax.3.2 The election of John Major due to absence of Poll-Tax avoiding previous votersAs the above Wikipedia reference points out:“There is also some evidence that the poll tax had a lasting effect of people not registering themselves on the electoral register to evade collection attempts. This may have had an effect on the results of the 1992 general election, which ended in a fourth successive Conservative victory, despite most opinion polls pointing to a hung parliament or narrow Labour majority.[3]”The UK Poll Tax removed millions of voters from the Parliamentary Electoral Register. All poll taxes everywhere have been implemented in order to deny the poor the right to vote and to help to elect right-wing governments. This is particularly so in the USA, but Thatcher’s Poll Tax did that in the UK in 1992.3.3 The further destruction of a fully-functioning British democracy by David Cameron’s Individual Electoral Registration Act 2013 (2013 IER)See How David Cameron’s Coalition Government Stole the 2015 General Electionwhich lists in detail all of the below and moreThe Coalition Government of Cameron-Ashdown passed the Individual Electoral Registration Act 2013 and after then Cameron had ten significant choices in the implementation of that Law. At every turn Cameron chose to reduce the number of voters on the Parliamentary Electoral Rolls in order to produce a partisan advantage for his party.At every stage in the process of implementing the 2013 IER Cameron opted forFirst, voter deletion rather than inclusionSecond, the same kind of voter deletion as had occurred in Northern Ireland in 2002, when about 10.2% (but see page 4 of the House of Commons Library Briefing Paper Number 6764, authored by Isobel White and dated 21 July 2015 which estimated a slightly higher number of 10.5%) of voters had been removed from the Parliamentary Electoral RollsIt should be noted that:“The Labour Party knew that a badly-implemented individual elector registration system would damage democracy by creating large levels of voter under-registration. These under-registered voters were mainly labour voters — students, tenants of local authority housing, ethnic minorities — so Labour had a sound democratic reason as well as a political reason for not wishing to progress this process. But the Conservative Party had no similar qualms and, as events have demonstrated, had no reservations about damaging the British democratic process if it suited their partisan objectives.”Third, the use of a limited Government database which initially reduced the electors on Parliamentary Voting Rolls by 5.5 million voters - what happened was“The DWP records used in the “Confirmation Live Run” for England and Wales initially identified voters from the DWP database only produced a voters’ roll of 36.9 million voters with 5.5 million voters not confirmed, so initially disenfranchised these 5.5 million voters — 13% of the electorate — an even larger percentage loss than 10.2% (or 10.5%?) reduction in voters in Northern Ireland.”Fourth, The abolition of the 2014 HER/Annual canvass“The abolition of the 2014 Household Electoral Review (HER) was a deliberate decision of the Coalition Government which removed the possibility of correcting the flawed early 2014 register resulting from the 2013 IER Act register by writing to the missing electors. It is impossible to conclude that this was not a deliberate partisan act to minimise non-Conservative voters.”Fifth, the absence of ring-fencing of the money allegedly provided to improve the Parliamentary Electoral Register so that Councils with government income cuts were not obliged to use that money for its stated purpose but could lessen the effect of cuts elsewhere in their budgets, which most didSixth, the denial of the suggestion that voters could register on voting day at the boothsThis is best practise elsewhere (eg in Australia) but Cameron refused to consider itSeventh, the refusal to consider the issues raised by the Electoral CommissionAll Electoral Commission recommendations about how the 2013 Act could be made fairer or more comprehensive were totally ignoredEighth, the voting down of parliamentary motions criticising the fast implementation of the 2013 IER ActThe Conservatives had the objective of creating a one-party UK state, as reported in New Commons boundaries top Conservative government agenda which saysNinth, the reduction of the penalty for non-responses to a request for voter registration from a likely £1,000 on the previous HER system to a weak comment on the IER Enquiry forms about how “You might be fined £80”The lowering of the penalty for non-responses and the encouragement of non-registration of an individual’s voting rights acts to produce a flawed PER which advantages the Conservative Party.Tenth, the Cameron Government proposes to use the reduced 2013 IER Act Parliamentary Electoral Roll produced in early 2015 as the basis for the computer-assisted gerrymandering of constituency boundaries in 2016 with the objective of locking out Labour Governments and “locking in Conservative Governments for generations”These ten factors demonstrated that David Cameron was hell-bent on destroying the previously more fully-functioning British Democracy in order to deliver the partisan advantage of continual Conservative Governments. Which is what has happened.That would not matter so much if Conservative “ruled-by-the-rich” Governments were capable of running the economy for the benefit of all and funding the SME inventions and innovations which are the growth key to more (about 75%) future developments.But for the last 900 years or so, Conservative Governments in China and the West have produced tremendous national economic decline - in Wang Anshi’s 11th century China, in the 14th century Yongle Emperor and Ming Dynasty China, and in ending the mercantile economies of the UK and the USA during the 20th century. No nation has ever become a world leader when led by the Conservatives, or remained a world leader under that Party, because their major role in history has been to end such leaderships.3.4 The election of the David Cameron Government in May 2015 due to the partisan reduction of non-Conservative previous voters through the Coalition Government’s implementation of the Individual Electoral Registration Act 2013It should be noted that:Despite the opinion polls predicting a Labour victory, the Conservatives won the May 2015 election. The Government takeover of the Parliamentary Electoral Rolls and the denial of the vote to millions of previous voters produced that result.The number of missing voters compared to the previous-to-2013 Parliamentary Electoral Rolls (PER) was somewhere between 5.5% and 12.5%. The Conservative Government, not content with removing 5.5% of voters in the first computer run, had written to a further 7% of voters challenging their right to vote and saying if they did respond by December 2014 their names would be struck off rom the PER.The distortion of the votes was mysogynist, anti-working class, anti-BME, anti-student, anti-young and racialist. This occurred becauseit was made more difficult for newly married women to re-instate their voting rightsthe greatest number of lost votes was in working class communities and in the B&ME communitystudents attending university were no longer automatically registered as voters unless they filled in an electoral registration form given them at University registrationparents could no longer register “attainers” or children about to become voters - children had to do it themselves, and about 60% to 75% of these potential voters did not registerthe greatest loss of previous voters was 40%, in the largely Black community of Hackney.The Electoral Registration Commission was struck dumb and became a Government agency, no longer suggesting ways to improve democratic registration.The head of the Cross-Bench Constituency Committee who suggested he would like to investigate the effect of the 2013 IER Act on the 2015 election results was immediately sacked by Cameron. That was not something Cameron wanted investigated or publicised.The Pollsters who promised an investigation into what went wrong with their forecasts became silent when they realised that the Government had taken over, and removed millions of electors from, the Parliamentary Voters’ Rolls. This had had removed the capability of the opinion polls to predict the outcome of elections, for only exit polls could be reliable in future. And any investigation would highlight the actions of the Conservative Government in damaging the PER, and that Government was a major customer of the pollsters.3.5 The BREXIT result which was brought about by the removal of about 8 million previous voters from the parliamentary electoral rolls3.5.1 The Brexit Result WAs Not A Reflection (as regularly claimed in the House Of Commons) of the Will Of The British People But The Result Of Cameron’s Reduced Parliamentary Voter RollsDavid Cameron wrongly judged on the basis of the opinion polls that the REMAIN vote would win. He bet his premiership on that result, and lost.Theresa May came into power when David Cameron resigned. May was a leader of the Remain movement and for three years she developed, and tried to persuade the House of Commons, about her so-called BREXiT negotiation which was a Remain document in all but name. May knew that an actual BREXIT would be economically disastrous for the UK and did her best to get a Remain result under a Brexit banner. That did not work.3.6 The destruction of the NHS as a government-funded service due to the redefinition of doctor’s GP services as emergency services and the almost complete conversion of nearly all NHS hospitals into cash-limited privatised NHS hospital trusts.The total costs of all UK health services in 2017 was £197.4 bn, then 9.6% of GDP. Government expenditure on the NHS was 79% of total expenditure at £155.6 bn, so private health costs were 21% of health expenditure at £41.6 bn that year.3.6.1 The redefinition of doctor’s GP services as emergency servicesFor decades after the NHS was created, patients could see their doctor within a day or two. Now all the NHS GP services have been redefined as an “emergencies only” service and only what the patient regards, and the surgery agrees, as an emergency will receive immediate treatment. It takes on average about six weeks to see a doctor. The new “emergencies only” system assumes that parents can always accurately diagnose childhood illnesses. Unfortunately they cannot always that.3.6.2 The End Of Increases in UK Life Expectancy After 2018 Because of Austerity And Cuts In NHS FundingAn American Report Life expectancy in the UK has previously increased every year since records began in Scotland in 1945 and in England in 1979 but in recent years that is no longer happening. See one press report based on an American report atUK life expectancy drops while other Western countries improvewhich says“The Mail Online reports that "Britain and the US are the only 2 western nations where life expectancy is falling," describing a study looking at changes in longevity in high-income countries.”The changes are significant:“The researchers found a number of countries, including the US and the UK, experienced decreased life expectancy from 2014 to 2015.In the UK, life expectancy at birth declined by 0.19 years for women and 0.26 years for men.But while most other countries bounced back from 2015 to 2016, the US and the UK did not.“That US-based report typically blames the victims and suggests increasing opiate use might lie behind the decrease in lifespan - not so valid for the UK as it may be in the USA. A more insightful British analysis based upon research by the Institute of British Actuaries indicates life expectancy in the UK has fallen considerably since 2010:Life expectancy falls by six months in biggest drop in UK forecastsA Report From The British Institute and Faculty of Actuaries(Longer term influences driving lower life expectancy projections)“The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, which calculates life expectancy on behalf of the UK pension industry, declined to speculate on why longevity is deteriorating for men and women in England and Wales. Some analysts, however, blame austerity and cuts in NHS spending, others point to worsening obesity, dementia and diabetes.”And“The actuaries said the evidence of slowing life expectancy that first emerged around 2010-11 is “a trend as opposed to a blip”.Falling longevity has accelerated. Last year’s analysis cut forecasted life expectancy by two months. This year it took off another six months.Compared with 2015, projections for life expectancy are now down by 13 months for men and 14 months for women.”And:“Pension companies have already begun to cash in on falling expectations. This week Legal & General said it was releasing £433m of the reserves it holds to pay future pensions because of the reductions in longevity expectations.”The UK reduction of life expectancy is obviously a very real effect.A more relevant report by Sir Michael Marmot, the Director of UCL’s Institute of Health Equity -see Life expectancy rises 'grinding to halt' - paints a relevant and accurate picture. That source says that“Using data from the Office for National Statistics, Sir Michael's research, widely reported in the media, has shown that the rate of increase in life expectancy has dropped by almost 50% since 2010. Between 2000 and 2015, life expectancy at birth increased by one year every five years for women and by one year every 3.5 years for men. Post-2010, however, life expectancy for women has only increased by one year every 10 years, with men's life expectancy increasing by one year every six years.Sir Michael says this shows that life expectancy growth is "pretty close to having ground to a halt", which is "historically highly unusual" given the increases seen over the past century. "I am deeply concerned with the levelling off, I expected it to keep getting better," the Epidemiology and Public Health Professor commented, noting that although conclusions about the lack of increase are not readily apparent, it is "entirely possible" austerity has had an impact.” The issue of geographical inequality is highlighted:“InequalityThe 2017 Marmot Indicators clearly show that inequalities in life expectancy between and within local authorities have persisted. Life expectancy for men varied from 74 in Blackpool to 83 in Kensington and Chelsea - a nine-year gap. Among women it varied from 79 in Manchester to 86 in Kensington and Chelsea - a seven-year gap.Within local authorities there was considerable variation in the inequality gradient in life expectancy between small areas based on level of deprivation. For men, in Barking and Dagenham these inequalities were equivalent to a two and a half year gap while in Stockton on Tees and Kensington and Chelsea the figures exceeded 16 years.” Education is also a significant factor in life expectancy. And the conclusion of Sir Michael’s summary report is:“Standards of LivingThe Marmot Indicators suggest that the UK is falling behind other G20 countries, and that despite reductions in unemployment, there have been significant increases in the numbers of people who do not have sufficient income to live an acceptable standard of living since the Marmot Review of 2010.The Marmot Indicators illustrate that across all regions the numbers not having enough money have increased. In London, the West Midlands, the North East, North West and Merseyside, and Yorkshire and Humberside, 3 out of 10 individuals live in households with insufficient income to meet a healthy standard of living.Having sufficient income is important for physical and mental health, children's wellbeing and development, and to enable people to afford or be in the mind set to prioritise a healthy lifestyle.”Clearly it is not just the NHS which is not safe in Conservative hands but the living standards of the whole economy are at risk and the lack of sufficient money to pay for a healthy standard of living is a major reason for the observed reductions in life expectancy.4 ObservationsIf you really know the hidden history of the United Kingdom, the current and recent actions of politicians become almost hilarious. For exampleex-Prime Minister John Major [who was only elected due to the removal of millions of voters because of the Poll Tax, which was devised by the now-Sir Oliver Letwin who might have been knighted for that service to the Conservative Party] is now objecting tothe suspension of Parliament by Boris Johnson (who is only in office because the BREXIT vote succeeded, and that happened because David Cameron disenfranchised millions of non-Conservative voters through the takeover of the Parliamentary Voters Rolls via the IER2013 Act -and these missing voters, as the opinion polls show, would have tipped the balance to produce a REMAIN vote) andBoris Johnson seems the epitome of Oswald Spengler vision of a “modern Caesar” with inadequate political or diplomatic skills as evidenced by his almost-immediate loss of control of Parliament and his absence of a realistic negotiating position with the EUAn election during October 2019 would have unpredictable results - the opinion polls cannot predict because far too many voters have been disenfranchised by the 2013 IER Act and the erratic behaviour of Conservative MPs must have loosened voter loyalty to that party.The BBC announcement that Nicaragua isn’t a democracy is little short of hilarious. The BBC has had over a hundred programmes discussing BREXIT and not one of these has mentioned the responsibility of the 2013IER Act in producing that undemocratic BREXIT result.5 Conclusions5.1 Britain is not now, and has not been since 1980, a democratic country. Ruled-by-the-rich economies not only become undemocratic but become low-growth and much less significant economies.5.2 The major reason why once-great mercantile economies such as the UK in 1890 and the USA after 1945 become low-growth economies is because the British Conservatives and the American Republicans not only rule in the interests of the rich but attack the living standards and social support systems of their working class. That phenomena explains the fall in the British and American economies during the 20th century and even now.5.3 Quite why the Conservatives and Republicans not only rule for the rich but also attack the incomes of the their working classes is a mystery to me, but the observation that they do so cannot be denied. Much of the origin of that policy may lie in the prejudices of rich businessmen who think their wealth could be increased by underpaying their workers.5.4 Britain’s nearly 800 banks supporting SME invention and innovation - its workshop of the world -has been mainly reduced to four London-based banks, none of which support SME invention and growth. British industry is minor except when foreign funded, and likely to be shut down where so funded.5.5 FDR’s great mercantile economy in 1945 has been reduced to a relatively minor low-investment low-growth manufacturing economy with disproportionate military clout.5.6 Even today, with more than century of British mercantile decline and with over 70 years of US mercantile decline, the major priority of national leaders is tax cuts for the rich. That’s what Trump’s tax cuts - 80% of which were paid to the richest 1% of families - are about. After a few days in office, Boris Johnson announced his intention to provide tax cuts for the rich. Neither policy has anything to do with increasing SME invention and innovation in the UK and USA, so both countries are losing their higher-development futures.This Answer may be too long to be popular on Quora.

Those who impact their profession or imprint history hardly ever do so by accident.Rather, they operate from ideation to IPO with purpose and strategy.And the best way to operate purposefully and strategically? By conducting research, heeding feedback, and defining what exactly you want your end product to look like. That research will inform how you construct the ideological foundation of your business or project, and lending credence to customer and user feedback will ensure you’re making necessary adjustments along the way.On the entrepreneurial side, this is actually pretty easy: as a young founder at the initial stages of company building, you have at your disposal a diverse array of case studies with which to educate yourself. And not always case studies in the literal sense, mind you (although you will, obviously, specifically test things like software applications), but the stories that produced the businesses or services you’re either fond of or look critically upon which you can draw parallels to––examples which you can seek to emulate or avoid.For instance, if you’re building a subscription business, try going through the acquisition funnel of a site you enjoy yourself and see what they do to make the experience seamless. What about the UX, sign-up emails, and introductory processes works so well? And you can do this across industries. If you’re in FinTech, you need not limit yourself to studying Barclays. Rather, do a deep dive into the practices employed by Spotify, or Pleo.Smart founders make good use of these “case studies” and more broadly of this research, paying particular attention to which strategies former founders employed to garner success, and which mistakes ended up grounding startups before they could ever take flight. Humans generally learn through trial and error. But it benefits us to learn through the trial and errors of others as much as we can.Of course, that’s not the end of our work. As I mentioned, to impact the world or your industry, you must remain flexible and listen to the people using your product or service. In building Nexford University, one of our core cultural tenants is placing value in the wisdom of our learners (we don’t call them students). Consumers don’t always do what they say they’re going to do, but aggregate data and consumer habits do serve as critical indicators of whether your offering resonates.Companies, teams, and creatives who understand this survive and, ultimately, thrive; those who don’t either stagnate or drown.Here’s why.A concrete understanding of what you’re doing and why cultivates conviction.Whether you’re starting a company or writing a book, you shouldn’t make decisions or build anything unless you’re holistically invested in your plan of attack—which is to say, don’t build without knowing what purpose or goal it’s meant to serve. If you’re not so informed or confident, you’ll carry out that plan half-heartedly at best, and without any conviction at worst. Your team will, in turn, sense that subsequent disconnect, and they themselves will lose motivation. Your apprehension, in this sense, will infect the totality of your company.This is why the smartest founders conduct lots of research in the ideation stage of their startup. It’s also why the world’s most consistently successful companies, musicians, and authors conduct continuous market testing. They understand the undying importance of operating with purpose and how such sound strategy itself emboldens motivation.More plainly, it benefits you to educate yourself and stay up to date around how to best provide value to your consumers.Personally, again, this is something I’m remarkably thankful I did in building Nexford University. My team spent months surveying thousands of students around the world, along with faculty members and employers. We set forth to identify which aspects of higher education succeeded––which methods of teaching, which modes of development, which forms of support worked––and which didn’t. And we tested elements of our software, applications, and services to fine-tune each. This legwork informed, among other things, what pain points we wanted Nexford to solve for.Then we set forth to create that solution. Ongoing, we’re continuously working to determine whether we’re still on course.Regular research will evince what problems remain to be solved.To this last point, consumers––whether they’re students, professionals, or founders themselves––want, above all, solutions.They don’t care about bells or whistles or whatever other superfluous appendages you believe to be market differentiators. They want only an absence of pain.Conducting continuous research of both the theoretical and practical sort will avail you this critical insight––what still causes your customers pain––along with a certain wisdom that the afore-referenced bells and whistles really don’t matter at all.In building and continuing to improve Nexford, my team has seen that what causes our could-be customers pain are things like elongated response times, mysterious fees, lack of flexibility, and one-size-fits-all pricing plans. What students really wanted is job skills, speed, affordability, transparency, and efficiency.So that’s what we’re designing and ever-tweaking Nexford to provide. We ask ourselves every day: how can we deliver on those rapidly changing skills, reduce fees, provide more transparency, and eliminate waste?Now, as should be noted, it can be tempting for founders to get carried away building features they deem cool and interesting––to create a company that solves for all the horrible misery unearthed through research and customer surveys.You must resist that temptation. Focus instead on utilizing insight first allowed by research and, more ongoing, provided by your customers, to build a company that does one thing really well.Ultimately, this is a matter of working smart and putting the customer first.The companies who appreciate the truly timeless importance of this––likeTwitter, Uber, and Google, for example––are the ones who most meaningfully succeed.That’s why, to others out there who, like me, are working to so fundamentally impact the world, I believe it prudent to suggest we follow this advice: utilize the lessons available in the struggles of those who came before us, seize the opportunity of the ongoing education provided by our users, and, above all, work smart.

Law Journals like All India Reporter (AIR) and others publish about the cases is a kind of case brief.Case Brief is an critical analysis and evaluation of a Judgment in your eyes. It is your Document, it is intended to help you only, to grasp the finer points of a Judgement, nobody else is going to be benefited by it, it is you who will refer it in future, if you want to know about the case.It is comparable to your Answer sheet in an examination.It can rather be compared to notes you prepare for an examination.You should not get a readymade brief and present/ submit it. It will be branded as plagiarism.If you want to learn the law, you will yourself have to prepare it.Case briefs are a necessary study aid in law school that helps to encapsulate and analyze the mountainous mass of material that law students must digest. The case brief represents a final product after reading a case, rereading it, taking it apart, and putting it back together again. In addition to its function as a tool for self-instruction and referencing, the case brief also provides a valuable cheat sheet for class participation.Who will read your brief? Most professors will espouse the value of briefing but will never ask to see that you have, in fact, briefed. As a practicing lawyer, your client doesn’t care if you brief, so long as you win the case. The judges certainly don’t care if you brief, so long as you competently practice the law. You are the person that the brief will serve! Keep this in mind when deciding what elements to include as part of your brief and when deciding what information to include under those elements.What are the elements of a brief? Different people will tell you to include different things in your brief. Most likely, upon entering law school, this will happen with one or more of your instructors. While opinions may vary, four elements that are essential to any useful brief are the following:(a) Facts (name of the case and its parties, what happened factually and procedurally, and the judgment)(b) Issues (what is in dispute)(c) Holding (the applied rule of law)(d) Rationale (reasons for the holding)If you include nothing but these four elements, you should have everything you need in order to recall effectively the information from the case during class or several months later when studying for exams.Because briefs are made for yourself, you may want to include other elements that expand the four elements listed above. Depending on the case, the inclusion of additional elements may be useful. For example, a case that has a long and important section expounding dicta might call for a separate section in your brief labeled: Dicta. Whatever elements you decide to include, however, remember that the brief is a tool intended for personal use. To the extent that more elements will help with organization and use of the brief, include them. On the other hand, if you find that having more elements makes your brief cumbersome and hard to use, cut back on the number of elements. At a minimum, however, make sure you include the four elements listed above.Elements that you may want to consider including in addition to the four basic elements are:(e) Dicta (commentary about the decision that was not the basis for the decision)(f) Dissent (if a valuable dissenting opinion exits, the dissent’s opinion)(g) Party’s Arguments (each party’s opposing argument concerning the ultimate issue)(h) Comments (personal commentary)Personal comments can be useful if you have a thought that does not fit elsewhere. In the personal experience of one of the authors, this element was used to label cases as specific kinds (e.g., as a case of vicarious liability) or make mental notes about what he found peculiar or puzzling about cases. This element allowed him to release his thoughts (without losing them) so that he could move on to other cases.In addition to these elements, it may help you to organize your thoughts, as some people do, by dividing Facts into separate elements:(1) Facts of the case (what actually happened, the controversy)(2) Procedural History (what events within the court system led to the present case)(3) Judgment (what the court actually decided)Procedural History is usually minimal and most of the time irrelevant to the ultimate importance of a case; however, this is not always true. One subject in which Procedure History is virtually always relevant is Civil Procedure.When describing the Judgment of the case, distinguish it from the Holding. The Judgment is the factual determination by the court, in favor of one party, such as affirmed, reversed, or remanded. In contrast, the Holding is the applied rule of law that serves as the basis for the ultimate judgment.Remember that the purpose of a brief is to remind you of the important details that make the case significant in terms of the law. It will be a reference tool when you are drilled by a professor and will be a study aid when you prepare for exams. A brief is also like a puzzle piece.The elements of the brief create the unique shape and colors of the piece, and, when combined with other pieces, the picture of the common law takes form. A well-constructed brief will save you lots of time by removing the need to return to the case to remember the important details and also by making it easier to put together the pieces of the common law puzzle.EXTRACTING THE RELEVANT INFORMATION: ANNOTATING AND HIGHLIGHTINGSo now that you know the basic elements of a brief, what information is important to include under each element? The simple answer is: whatever is relevant. But what parts of a case are relevant? When you read your first few cases, you may think that everything that the judge said was relevant to his ultimate conclusion. Even if this were true, what is relevant for the judge to make his decision is not always relevant for you to include in your brief. Remember, the reason to make a brief is not to persuade the world that the ultimate decision in the case is a sound one, but rather to aid in refreshing your memory concerning the most important parts of the case.What facts are relevant to include in a brief? You should include the facts that are necessary to remind you of the story. If you forget the story, you will not remember how the law in the case was applied. You should also include the facts that are dispositive to the decision in the case. For instance, if the fact that a car is white is a determining factor in the case, the brief should note that the case involves a white car and not simply a car. To the extent that the procedural history either helps you to remember the case or plays an important role in the ultimate outcome, you should include these facts as well.What issues and conclusions are relevant to include in a brief? There is usually one main issue on which the court rests its decision. This may seem simple, but the court may talk about multiple issues, and may discuss multiple arguments from both sides of the case. Be sure to distinguish the issues from the arguments made by the parties. The relevant issue or issues, and corresponding conclusions, are the ones for which the court made a final decision and which are binding. The court may discuss intermediate conclusions or issues, but stay focused on the main issue and conclusion which binds future courts.What rationale is important to include in a brief? This is probably the most difficult aspect of the case to determine. Remember that everything that is discussed may have been relevant to the judge, but it is not necessarily relevant to the rationale of the decision. The goal is to remind yourself of the basic reasoning that the court used to come to its decision and the key factors that made the decision favor one side or the other.A brief should be brief! Overly long or cumbersome briefs are not very helpful because you will not be able to skim them easily when you review your notes or when the professor drills you. On the other hand, a brief that is too short will be equally unhelpful because it lacks sufficient information to refresh your memory. Try to keep your briefs to one page in length. This will make it easy for you to organize and reference them.Do not get discouraged. Learning to brief and figuring out exactly what to include will take time and practice. The more you brief, the easier it will become to extract the relevant information.While a brief is an extremely helpful and important study aid, annotating and highlighting are other tools for breaking down the mass of material in your casebook. The remainder of this section will discuss these different techniques and show how they complement and enhance the briefing process.Annotating CasesMany of you probably already read with a pencil or pen, but if you do not, now is the time to get in the habit. Cases are so dense and full of information that you will find yourself spending considerable amounts of time rereading cases to find what you need. An effective way to reduce this time is to annotate the margins of the casebook. Your pencil (or pen) will be one of your best friends while reading a case. It will allow you to mark off the different sections (such as facts, procedural history, or conclusions), thus allowing you to clear your mind of thoughts and providing an invaluable resource when briefing and reviewing.You might be wondering why annotating is important if you make an adequate, well-constructed brief. By their very nature briefs cannot cover everything in a case. Even with a thorough, well-constructed brief you may want to reference the original case in order to reread dicta that might not have seemed important at the time, to review the complete procedural history or set of facts, or to scour the rationale for a better understanding of the case; annotating makes these tasks easier. Whether you return to a case after a few hours or a few months, annotations will swiftly guide you to the pertinent parts of the case by providing a roadmap of the important sections. Your textual markings and margin notes will refresh your memory and restore specific thoughts you might have had about either the case in general or an individual passage.Annotations will also remind you of forgotten thoughts and random ideas by providing a medium for personal comments.In addition to making it easier to review an original case, annotating cases during the first review of a case makes the briefing process easier. With adequate annotations, the important details needed for your brief will be much easier to retrieve. Without annotations, you will likely have difficulty locating the information you seek even in the short cases. It might seem strange that it would be hard to reference a short case, but even a short case will likely take you at least fifteen to twenty-five minutes to read, while longer cases may take as much as thirty minutes to an hour to complete. No matter how long it takes, the dense material of all cases makes it difficult to remember all your thoughts, and trying to locate specific sections of the analysis may feel like you are trying to locate a needle in a haystack. An annotation in the margin, however, will not only swiftly guide you to a pertinent section, but will also refresh the thoughts that you had while reading that section.When you read a case for the first time, read for the story and for a basic understanding of the dispute, the issues, the rationale, and the decision. As you hit these elements (or what you think are these elements) make a mark in the margins. Your markings can be as simple as facts (with a bracket that indicates the relevant part of the paragraph). When you spot an issue, you may simply mark issue or instead provide a synopsis in your own words. When a case sparks an idea write that idea in the margin as well you never know when a seemingly irrelevant idea might turn into something more.Finally, when you spot a particularly important part of the text, underline it (or highlight it as described below).With a basic understanding of the case, and with annotations in the margin, the second read-through of the case should be much easier. You can direct your reading to the most important sections and will have an easier time identifying what is and is not important. Continue rereading the case until you have identified all the relevant information that you need to make your brief, including the issue(s), the facts, the holding, and the relevant parts of the analysis.Pencil or pen which is better to use when annotating? Our recommendation is a mechanical pencil. Mechanical pencils make finer markings than regular pencils, and also than ballpoint pens. Although you might think a pencil might smear more than a pen, with its sharp point a mechanical pencil uses very little excess lead and will not smear as much as you might imagine. A mechanical pencil will also give you the freedom to make mistakes without consequences. When you first start annotating, you may think that some passages are more important than they really are, and therefore you may resist the urge to make a mark in order to preserve your book and prevent false guideposts. With a pencil, however, the ability to erase and rewrite removes this problem.HighlightingWhy highlight? Like annotating, highlighting may seem unimportant if you create thorough, well-constructed briefs, but highlighting directly helps you to brief. It makes cases, especially the more complicated ones, easy to digest, review and use to extract information.Highlighting takes advantage of colors to provide a uniquely effective method for reviewing and referencing a case. If you prefer a visual approach to learning, you may find highlighting to be a very effective tool.If annotating and highlighting are so effective, why brief? Because the process of summarizing a case and putting it into your own words within a brief provides an understanding of the law and of the case that you cannot gain through the process of highlighting or annotating.The process of putting the case into your own words forces you to digest the material, while annotating and highlighting can be accomplished in a much more passive manner.What should you highlight? Similar to annotating, the best parts of the case to highlight are those that represent the needed information for your brief such as the facts, the issue, the holding and the rationale.Unlike annotating, highlighting provides an effective way to color code, which makes referring to the case even easier. In addition, Highlighters are particularly useful in marking off entire sections by using brackets. These brackets will allow you to color-code the case without highlighting all the text, leaving the most important phrases untouched for a more detailed highlight marking or underlining.Highlighting is a personal tool, and therefore should be used to the extent that highlighting helps, but should be modified in a way that makes it personally time efficient and beneficial. For instance, you might combine the use of annotations in the margins with the visual benefit of highlighting the relevant text. You may prefer to underline the relevant text with a pencil, but to use a highlighter to bracket off the different sections of a case. Whatever you choose to do, make sure that it works for you, regardless of what others recommend. The techniques in the remainder of this section will describe ways to make full use of your highlighters.First, buy yourself a set of multi-colored highlighters, with at least four, or perhaps five or six different colors. Yellow, pink, and orange are usually the brightest. Depending on the brand, purple and green can be dark, but still work well. Although blue is a beautiful color, it tends to darken and hide the text.Therefore we recommend that you save blue for the elements that you rarely highlight.For each different section of the case, choose a color, and use that color only when highlighting the section of the case designated for that color. Consider using yellow for the text that you tend to highlight most frequently. Because yellow is the brightest, you may be inclined to use yellow for the Conclusions in order to make them stand out the most. If you do this, however, you will exhaust your other colors much faster than yellow and this will require that you purchase an entire set of new highlighters when a single color runs out because colors such as green are not sold separately. If instead you choose to use yellow on a more frequently highlighted section such as the Analysis, when it comes time to replace your yellow marker, you will need only to replace your yellow highlighter individually. In the personal experience on one of the authors, the sections of cases that seemed to demand the most highlighter attention were theFacts and the Analysis, while the Issues and Holdings demanded the least. Other Considerations andProcedural History required lots of highlighting in particular cases although not in every case.Experiment if you must, but try to choose a color scheme early on in the semester and stick with it. That way, when you come back to the first cases of the semester, you will not be confused with multiple color schemes. The basic sections of a case for which you should consider giving a different colors are:o Factso Procedural Historyo Issue (and questions presented)o Holding (and conclusions)o Analysis (rationale)o Other Considerations (such as dicta)Not all of these sections demand a separate color. You may find that combining Facts and Procedural History or Issues and Holdings works best. Furthermore, as mentioned above, some sections may not warrant highlighting in every case (e.g., dicta probably do not need to be highlighted unless they are particularly important). If you decide that a single color is all that you need, then stick to one, but if you find yourself highlighting lots of text from many different sections, reconsider the use of at least a few different colors. Highlighters make text stand out, but only when used appropriately. The use of many colors enables you to highlight more text without reducing the highlighter’s effectiveness. Three to four colors provides decent color variation without the cumbersomeness of handling too many markers.Once you are comfortable with your color scheme, determining exactly what to highlight still may be difficult. Similar to knowing what to annotate, experience will perfect your highlighting skills. Be careful not to highlight everything, thus ruining your highlighters effectiveness; at the same time, do not be afraid to make mistakes.Now that we have covered the basics of reading, annotating, highlighting, and briefing a case, you are ready to start practicing. Keep the tips and techniques mentioned in this chapter in mind when you tackle the four topics in the remainder of this book. If you have difficultly, refer back to this chapter to help guide you as you master the case method of study and the art of using the common law.______________________________HOW TO BRIEF A CASEI. DistinctionsA. A case brief is a dissection of a judicial opinion -- it contains a written summary of the basic components of that decision.B. Persuasive briefs (trial and appellate) are the formal documents a lawyer files with a court in support of his or her client’s position.II. Functions of case briefingA. Case briefing helps you acquire the skills of case analysis and legal reasoning. Briefing a case helps you understand it.B. Case briefing aids your memory. Briefs help you remember the cases you read(1) for class discussion,(2) for end-of-semester review for final examinations, and(3) for writing and analyzing legal problems.Do not try to memorize case briefs. Learning law is a process of problem solving through legal reasoning. Cases must be read in light of the series of cases with which they appear in your casebook or on the class syllabus.III. Briefing a case: The stepsAlthough the exact form of your briefs may and can vary from case to case, the following parts should appear somewhere in your brief in a way that helps you understand the case and recall the needed information.1. Read through the opinion first so you will understand the overall story and identify important facts, etc., before beginning to brief the case on paper.2. Heading:a. Case name (to identify the parties)b. Court namec. Date of the decisiond. Page number where the case appears in the textbook3. Statement of Factsa. Identify the relationship/status of the parties (Note: Do not merely refer to the parties as the plaintiff/defendant or appellant/appellee; be sure to also include more descriptive generic terms to identify the relationship/status at issue, e.g., buyer/seller, employer/employee, landlord/tenant, etc.)b. Identify legally relevant facts, that is, those facts that tend to prove or disprove an issue before the court. The relevant facts tell what happened before the parties entered the judicial system.c. Identify procedurally significant facts. You should set out(1) the cause of action (C/A) (the law the plaintiff claimed was broken),(2) relief the plaintiff requested,(3) defenses, if any, the defendant raised.4. Procedural History (PH): This is the disposition of the case in the lower court(s) that explains how the case got to the court whose opinion you are reading. Include the following:a. The decision(s) of the lower court(s).NOTE: If the case was decided by a trial court and reviewed by an intermediate appellate court before reaching the court whose decision you are now reading, be sure to note what each court decided.b. The damages awarded, if relevant.c. Who appealed and why.5. Issues:a. Substantive issue: A substantive statement of the issue consists of two parts --i. the point of law in disputeii. the key facts of the case relating to that point of law in dispute (legally relevant facts)You must include the key facts from the case so that the issue is specific to that case. Typically, the disputed issue involves how the court applied some element of the pertinent rule to the facts of the specific case. Resolving the issue will determine the court’s disposition of the case.b. Procedural issue: What is the appealing party claiming the lower court did wrong (e.g., ruling on evidence, jury instructions, granting of summary judgment, etc.)?6. Judgment:This is the court’s final decision as to the rights of the parties, the court’s response to a party’s request for relief. Generally, the appellate court will either affirm, reverse, or reverse with instructions. The judgment is usually found at the end of the opinion.7. Holding:What was held. This is a statement of law that is the court’s answer to the issue. If you have written the issue statement(s) correctly, the holding is often the positive or negative statement of the issue statement.8. Rule of Law or Legal Principle Applied:This is the rule of law that the court applies to determine the substantive rights of the parties. The rule of law could derive from a statute, case rule, regulation, or may be a synthesis of prior holdings in similar cases (common law). The rule or legal principle may be expressly stated in the opinion or it may be implied.9. Reasoning:This is the court’s analysis of the issues and the heart of the case brief. Reasoning is the way in which the court applied the rules/ legal principles to the particular facts in the case to reach its decision. This includes syllogistic application of rules as well as policy arguments the court used to justify its holding (why the decision was socially desirable).10. Concurring/Dissenting Opinions:A judge who hears a case may not agree with the majority’s decision and will write a separate dissenting opinion. Another judge may agree with the decision but not with the majority’s reasoning and will write a separate concurring opinion. Note the concurring/dissenting judge(s) reasons for refusing to join in the majority opinion.11. Additional Comments/ Personal Impressions:What are your reactions to and critique of the opinion?Whether it is over ruling the precedents i.e. past judgments?Anything you like?Dislike?How does this case fall in line with the other cases you have read?Do not accept the court’s opinion blindly.Assess the reasoning in each case.Is it sound?Is it contradictory?What are the political, economic or social impacts of this decision?