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I know there is plenty of information on this in other forum topics (I've read all of them sadly) however for our law review write on competition we have to write a case comment. I bought the Volokh book and read that however that book dealt more with a student picking a topic and didn't really touch on having to analyze a particular case...I guess my main question is any advice? (pretty broad I know)

MJD334890 wrote:I know there is plenty of information on this in other forum topics (I've read all of them sadly) however for our law review write on competition we have to write a case comment. I bought the Volokh book and read that however that book dealt more with a student picking a topic and didn't really touch on having to analyze a particular case...I guess my main question is any advice? (pretty broad I know)

You should probably read your honor code before Volokh.

RED ALERT! CHEATERS ON THE LOOSE!

Are you seriously unaware that there's a 95% chance you just openly violated your school's honor code, and a 99% chance that you just openly violated the rules of your write on competition?

Wonder if this person goes to Duke...

You know, people harp on the "honor code" violation all the time here, but the OP didn't ask for any specific advice. Its not cheating to ask "what is a case comment."

Find an interesting case, sheperdize it, detail the case facts and holding, discuss the circumstances and precedent leading up to the decision (and how the case extended or retracted the trend in the law), discuss court treatment (and academic treatment) of the case after it was decided, and argue why the case was rightly / wrongly decided, and describe the future consequences of the case.

There. You didn't cheat. Your work product will be your own. No one gave you any substantive ideas. You inquired as to format. That is fine if you weren't given details on what it should look like.

And if this is cheating, its your ass, not mine. Its not cheating if you don't get caught. (I KID! I KID!)

NotMyRealName09 wrote:You know, people harp on the "honor code" violation all the time here, but the OP didn't ask for any specific advice. Its not cheating to ask "what is a case comment."

Find an interesting case, sheperdize it, detail the case facts and holding, discuss the circumstances and precedent leading up to the decision (and how the case extended or retracted the trend in the law), discuss court treatment (and academic treatment) of the case after it was decided, and argue why the case was rightly / wrongly decided, and describe the future consequences of the case.

There. You didn't cheat. Your work product will be your own. No one gave you any substantive ideas. You inquired as to format. That is fine if you weren't given details on what it should look like.

And if this is cheating, its your ass, not mine. Its not cheating if you don't get caught. (I KID! I KID!)

IDK about other schools, but at mine you can't use any outside materials or supplements on the writing competition.

NotMyRealName09 wrote:You know, people harp on the "honor code" violation all the time here, but the OP didn't ask for any specific advice. Its not cheating to ask "what is a case comment."

Find an interesting case, sheperdize it, detail the case facts and holding, discuss the circumstances and precedent leading up to the decision (and how the case extended or retracted the trend in the law), discuss court treatment (and academic treatment) of the case after it was decided, and argue why the case was rightly / wrongly decided, and describe the future consequences of the case.

There. You didn't cheat. Your work product will be your own. No one gave you any substantive ideas. You inquired as to format. That is fine if you weren't given details on what it should look like.

And if this is cheating, its your ass, not mine. Its not cheating if you don't get caught. (I KID! I KID!)

Didn't you go to SMU? This post would have violated our write-on rules.

AVBucks4239 wrote:Wonder if this person goes to Duke...

NotMyRealName09 wrote:You know, people harp on the "honor code" violation all the time here, but the OP didn't ask for any specific advice. Its not cheating to ask "what is a case comment."

There. You didn't cheat. Your work product will be your own. No one gave you any substantive ideas. You inquired as to format. That is fine if you weren't given details on what it should look like.

It's not necessarily fine depending on how the rules and honor code are worded. Just because the question doesn't deal with work product or substance doesn't mean it is automatically an okay question.

How do we know his write-on competition has started? He could just be doing preliminary research to get a feel for the assignment.

The write-on for my school hasn't started yet. I'm sure there are others like that. Fortunately for me, my school provides samples from previous years.

3|ink wrote:How do we know his write-on competition has started? He could just be doing preliminary research to get a feel for the assignment.

The write-on for my school hasn't started yet. I'm sure there are others like that. Fortunately for me, my school provides samples from previous years.

We don't. But during this time of the year, as a general rule, I assume every post asking about the write on or posing a bluebooking question is someone cheating on their write on competition. I thinks its a fair assumption.

Not sure whether OP's competition has started, but if it has not, it should be okay to research in advance unless stated otherwise in the rules, right? Otherwise, we would not allow to bring in any personal knowledge to the writing.

Ok, I admit it - I never read my school's honor code. (MSU Law). Or if I did, I don't recall. I also never asked anyone for advice on how to kick ass because it just came naturally to me. Just kidding, but I don't see the harm between what I provided and referencing a secondary source like Volokh regarding form. OP wasn't asking for substance, he or she was just asking what a case comment should look like. If the writing competition didn't provide guidance on what a case comment should look lik, and apparently they didn't, how in the world would ANYONE ever be able to complete it without some sort of outside reference? I don't view that as cheating generally - asking for a topic, or for substantive analysis would be cheating, sure - but of course, I have no stake in this whatsoever.

An Airforce Captain, a fighter pilot, once told me, when discussing whether a person could get lasik to improve bad eyesight enough to qualify to fly, that he had his vision corrected to 20/10 - better than normal and great for VID'ing enemy planes from more miles away than his peers. "If you're not cheating, you're not trying" he told me. I'm not sure how that is relevant, but its about cheating and fighter pilots, so, profit?

And where would the line on a case comment be drawn? Is it cheating to use Lexis to lookup interesting cases? Would it be cheating to use lexis to view student article "Case Comments" as part of researching for the competition (assuming its not a "closed" competition with all materials provided)? Not to plagarize, of course, but to see how its done. That last point sums it up - if its not cheating to lookup published student case comments during the course of the competition, which it wouldn't appear to be if OP has to craft an original case comment from scratch, its not cheating to ask a general question about form here.

Actually, why didn't you just do that in the first place? Look up examples in Westlaw / Lexis / Journals?