Memorizing case law for con law exam Forum

[waxecstatic]

I have my constitutional law exam on Wednesday, and just took Torts yesterday. I did some studying last week for con law but the past few days I just focused on Torts. Anyway, for anyone who has taken con law or is taking it, is it a good idea to have a thorough understanding of the cases? Obviously there are quite a few. Anyone have an idea of the most efficient way to tackle this?

Thanks!!

[MrPapagiorgio]

My con law prof didn't care about naming cases as long as we knew the rules (not as lucky as you may think if you knew my con law prof), but the best way to do this is flashcards. For con law the facts of the individual case are less important and it is more important to know the ruling and the reasoning behind it. Put those in flashcard format and you will remember them. One tip though: don't keep them in the same order. Primacy and recency effects are real and it will lead to you remembering the beginning cases and the end cases without having a good grasp on the ones in the middle. So switch it up after each time you go through them.

[gdane]

Do what I did for contracts.

I wrote down every case name and the holding about 10 times over the course of a few days. Do that for every important case. There are some cases that really dont matter and you shouldnt waste your time memorizing.

It worked for me. On my contracts exam we had a "case identification" section and Im pretty sure I got all 20 right.

Good luck!

[waxecstatic]

Cool, thanks for the responses!

[zomginternets]

My con law prof didn't care about naming cases as long as we knew the rules (not as lucky as you may think if you knew my con law prof), but the best way to do this is flashcards. For con law the facts of the individual case are less important and it is more important to know the ruling and the reasoning behind it. Put those in flashcard format and you will remember them. One tip though: don't keep them in the same order. Primacy and recency effects are real and it will lead to you remembering the beginning cases and the end cases without having a good grasp on the ones in the middle. So switch it up after each time you go through them.

This was not my experience. My Con Law I MC section had questions that required us not just to memorize the rules of the cases, but also the fact pattern in those cases.