How do I read a U.S. case citation and find the text of the opinion? In something like this: "We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place." Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483, 495 (1954)". What is that cryptic thing after the quotation marks? How do I understand what it says? Is there somewhere I can go to read these cases, or read about them?
The author of the passage is telling you where the quotation comes from, using a formal case citation. Lawyers usually don't use footnotes, endnotes, or parentheses to set off these citations. Case citations are a sort of shorthand developed by lawyers and judges over the past few centuries. The goal is generally to identify the name of the case, where to locate it, when it was decided, and what court decided it. Although there are a few different styles for formal citations to cases, you don't need to learn much to cover the basics for common types of cases. How to Read It Case name Brown v. Bd. of Educ. Case names usually have a "v." in the middle. Most of the time, the plaintiff goes on the left and the defendant goes on the right. But United States Supreme Court cases are different. Almost always, the Supreme Court reviews decisions of lower courts. They do so in an unusual way: the loser in the lower court asks the Supreme Court to change the outcome. Because the loser, more formally called the "appellant," is the one initiating proceedings in the Supreme Court, they go on the left. (To learn more, look into "writ of certiorari.") Since Brown is a Supreme Court case, we can guess that Brown lost in the lower court; and indeed that's what happened in this case. There are some arcane rules about abbreviating case names. The full name of this case is "Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka." If you're a law student, especially if you're on the law review, you get to learn all about these rules. If you're not, thank your lucky stars and try not to worry about it. Volume, reporter, and page number 347 U.S. 483 This is the bit you want to copy and paste to find the case. It's a lot like a URL: the idea is to clearly identify and locate a case. If you just want to find the case on the Internet, you don't need to understand how it works, and you can skip to the next section. These three parts tell you where to find the beginning of the case in a good old-fashioned printed book. You know those yellow books in the background of lawyer advertisements? That's what we're talking about. They're called "reporters," because they originally contained somebody else's reports of what judges said in court. Now, of course, the judges write down their own decisions; but the name stuck. The middle part, here "U.S.", identifies what set of books the case is in. You can learn something about the court from this: U.S. -- United States Reports -- United States Supreme Court F., F.2d, F.3d -- Federal Reporter -- Federal Courts of Appeal F. Supp -- Federal Supplement -- Federal District Courts (trial courts) The first number is what volume the case is in. This is the number printed on the spine of the book. The second number is what page the case begins on. Pinpoint citation , 495 When somebody wants to refer to a specific place in a case, they just put the page number or range right after the case page number. Remember, "483" was the page the case starts on; "495" is the page where the court actually say what we're talking about. If you flip to page 495 of volume 347 of the U.S. Reports, you'll find the quoted sentence. Remember: usually when you see two numbers separated by a comma, like "483, 495", the first one is part of the citation to the case as a whole, and the second one says what page to look at. Date and court name (1954) This part varies a lot between the different formal styles. In "Bluebook" style, which most law journals use, the year the case was decided is enclosed in parentheses, along with anything necessary to identify the court. Here, there's no court name, because we already know from the "U.S." that it's a Supreme Court case. For lower appellate cases, this might be "(9th Cir. 2005)", meaning that it's a decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from 2005. Dealing with short citations You may also see something like "Id. at 495". This is a short citation; "Id." means "the last thing I cited." Go back to the nearest previous citation and look that up, going to the page cited. How to Use It (aka "tl;dr") The key to actually finding a case on the Internet is to copy the three numbers in the middle--the volume, reporter name, and page number. Here, "347 U.S. 483". Don't include any pincite after a comma; Google and many search engines may be clever enough to figure out what you mean, but they may not. There are a bunch of free online services providing case texts. I prefer Google Scholar; just paste the citation in, being sure to select "case law". Other people like CourtListener, FindLaw, and Justia.com. Commercial databases like Westlaw or LexisNexis have a lot more than just the case; most importantly, they list citations to the case. Your local public law library might have a terminal for one of the services that you can walk in and use. Be sure you're reading the actual case, not a summary or "annotation." This is especially true if you're writing an answer here on Law.SE. Many case summaries, especially for famous cases, are written for first-year law students; some of them are probably written by first-year law students! They're often helpful, but they focus on what the student needs to know for class, which often isn't what the case actually said. If I find you quoting a case summary as if it's "the law," I will not be very nice to you.
The details depend on the state, of course. The common law thing you are looking for is a writ of mandamus -- a court order to a public official to do something (or not do something) that they are required to do under the law. Writs of mandamus were traditionally only applicable to ministerial tasks (i.e. things that are basically paper-shuffling where there is little to no discretion); marriage licenses are typically considered ministerial. With discretionary actions, things are much more complicated because the government official is supposed to have significant ability to decide what should and shouldn't be allowed; mandamus doesn't apply unless there's a right to the action requested. In some cases, mandamus has been replaced with other forms of judicial review, but in Alabama it is definitely still mandamus that's involved (source: mandamus is what's previously been used to stop issuance of licenses). For federal review, which is more likely to get somewhere, the approach to use is the exact same thing that led to DeBoer (the case bundled into Obergefell that was about granting licenses), and Perry, and many of the other gay marriage cases: a lawsuit seeking an injunction or declaratory relief under 42 USC 1983, which allows actions in law and equity whenever anyone denies civil rights to a US citizen (or someone in the jurisdiction of the US) under color of law. The ultimate result of this kind of suit is a federal court order to issue a marriage license, or a declaration that it's illegal to not issue the license (and so anyone who doesn't will be subject to a court order). Violating this order, like any court order, is contempt of court.
Early in the history of the US, various states passed laws adopting the then extant common law and at least some of the statutory law of Great Britain (much of which was in origin the Law of England) as law in those states. Such laws would still be valid, unless later acts had amended or replaced particular provisions. Tracing which provisions had since been altered would be a massive task. Basic common law, particularly definitions of crimes such as fraud, theft, murder, and of torts such as conversion, slander, libel, and the like will probably be largely unchanged, with some modifications. Blackstone's Commentaries remained a significant legal text used in training lawyers and in legal practice in the US through much of the nineteenth century.
A good starting point would be the SCOTUS opinion, or everything on SCOTUSblog, especially the application for injunctive relief filed on Aug. 30. There is a long sequence of petitions and orders which ask the courts either to issue an injunction preventing the law from taking force, or to vacate an administrative stay of proceedings by the lower court regarding petitioner's challenge. The lower court denied the petitions, therefore petitioners turn to SCOTUS to get an injunction against the law. Then you can turn to the SCOTUS opinion to see what the reasons were, for and against the petition. The majority position is that an applicant must carry the burden of making a “strong showing” that it is “likely to succeed on the merits,” that it will be “irreparably injured absent a stay,” that the balance of the equities favors it, and that a stay is consistent with the public interest. The majority concludes that The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue. But their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden. Immediately after this the court comments that federal courts enjoy the power to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves. However, it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit our intervention The law states that Any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person who and the named respondents (government workers of various sorts) all appear to be precluded from filing an action – thus an injunction against the judge is superfluous since he cannot file a lawsuit anyhow. It is also unclear whether SCOTUS can issue an injunction against state judges asked to decide a lawsuit under Texas’s law. When SCOTUS say &quot;it is unclear&quot; in this context, they mean that petitions did not adequately demonstrate that the court can in fact issue such an injunction. It's not that SCOTUS cannot decide such matters after extensive consideration of the facts / arguments and discussion, it's that the standards for an emergency action require something that the court found lacking in the petition: we cannot say the applicants have met their burden to prevail in an injunction or stay application. In reaching this conclusion, we stress that we do not purport to resolve definitively any jurisdictional or substantive claim in the applicants’ lawsuit.
I'm not a lawyer, but under the law as it's written, I see two problems: 17 USC 121 allows "authorized entities" to make and publish accessible copies of works. An "authorized entity" is defined as a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities. So if you, as a private citizen, decide to do this, it could conceivably be copyright infringement. You might have to set up some kind of non-profit organization to make it legal. It's also OK (I think) if you make such copies for your own personal use, so long as you don't redistribute them. So far as I can tell, nothing under 17 USC 121 requires the original publisher to provide an "authorized entity" with a copy in any particular format (PDF, paper, or otherwise) for making accessible copies. Basically, the law seems to have envisioned organizations of sighted people purchasing paper copies, transcribing them, and republishing them; not blind individuals doing electronic transcription for themselves. It might still be worth contacting Hal Leonard and asking what they can do for you, but unfortunately it doesn't look like the law requires them to do anything for you. As Nij points out in the comments, this really seems to be a question about the company's policy, rather than the law.
It is the lower courts' interpretation of a senior court's judgment&mdash;specifically the ratio&mdash;that determines what is the precedent. If a court doesn't want its opinion to bind lower courts, it can be clear in its judgment that this is not what was intended. For example, a court could say that this judgment turns on the particular facts of this case, and should be interpreted narrowly by lower courts. Alternatively, a previous precedent could be narrowed by a later judgment of a senior court if it was later felt that the ratio was being applied too widely. (I have read examples of the explicitly narrow ratio, but haven't been able to find any today)
Some of the documents are here. As document 61 of the trial, the government motion for bench trial, argues, There is no constitutional right to a jury trial for criminal contempt charges resulting in a sentence of imprisonment of six months or less. Arpaio responds in document 62 that Defendant Arpaio acknowledges that there is no constitutional right to a jury trial for defendants charged with “petty” offenses where the maximum sentence does not exceed six months imprisonment, but continues the argument (the point being that there is no question that there is no absolute right to a jury trial, esp. in the instant case). He argues Many of the actions of the referring judge will become an issue in the case, calling into question the objectives and motives of Judge Snow. A public official’s actions and motives should and must be decided by an impartial jury of the elected official’s peers. The court order is document 83. There, The Court finds that this case is appropriate for a bench trial. This case focuses on the application of facts to the law to determine if Defendant intentionally violated a court order. Essentially, since there is no right to a jury trial and no compelling reason to grant a jury trial (e.g. the court found no merit to his argument that there would be the appearance of impropriety), the motion for a bench trial was granted. The order cites case law regarding the "not longer that 6 months" rule from Muniz v. Hoffman, 422 U.S. 454; United States v. Rylander, 714 F.2d 996; Taylor v. Hayes, 418 U.S. 488; United States v. Aldridge, 995 F.2d 233; United States v. Berry, 232 F.3d 897.
No Only the ratio decidendi of a case sets binding precedent. By definition, that has to be in the decision of the court’s majority because that’s what decided the case. If a minority decision disagrees with the majority on ratio, then the majority is the binding precedent. If the point is obiter, then it’s merely persuasive, not binding, irrespective of where it is.