Week 4 - Just the Facts, Ma'am
Overview
Now that we've completed our overview of the legal reasoning process (applying RULES to FACTS to get CONCLUSIONS), we're going to go into more depth on each of those elements. For the next few weeks, we'll focus on facts, and then the following weeks we'll focus on rules.
For this unit, we will work with the material on Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress in Chapter 3 of Making the Case. I will be abbreviating this law with IIED. |
Note about terminology: There will be legal terminology used throughout this course that you may not know. Here are two dictionaries that might be helpful: Legal Information Institute Dictionary, Black's Online Legal Dictionary.
On this page I have put in dark red some terms that you will need to know. If you don't, look them up!!! |
As you saw in the various legal problems you just completed, sometimes an issue is factual in nature: did Jim (in "Baker and Abba," Behrens 85) use more force than was necessary when he pulled out a gun and shot Baker? And sometimes an issue is more about a rule: just what constitutes a "threatening gesture" so that an act meets the definition of an assault?
Facts and rules are always entwined. Solving legal problems is not a matter of picking a rule and applying it automatically to the facts. The rules that have developed, whether in a statute or in case law, have done so because of the different facts that have occurred.
For example, one of the reasoning problems ("Mrs. Trueblue," Behrens 85) involved a question of whether some conduct was "outrageous" enough to be able to say it met the requirements of the rule about inflicting emotional distress. You had to decide whether the facts were outrageous enough. Of course, in the real world, you wouldn't be making that argument in a vacuum. You'd be arguing in a certain jurisdiction where there had been multiple cases about outrageous conduct inflicting emotional distress--and those cases would have developed and clarified the rules about what makes an act "outrageous" enough. Is screaming someone's name out in the street outrageous? Is screaming someone's name in their office outrageous? Is screaming someone's name in their office, waving compromising photos from a former love affair outrageous? These previous cases that establish the rules for a jurisdiction are called precedent. |
From Margaret Hagan's Open Law Lab
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One of the places these evolving definitions are inscribed are Jury Instructions. If you will look at pages 119-120 in Behrens, you will see selections from the California jury instructions on Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress:
Extreme and outrageous conduct . . . goes beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community. . . . [It] is not mere insults, indignities, threats, annoyances. . . . (Behrens 119)
How did the committee that drafted this expansion of the statute on Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) come up with this definition? Well, through the multitude of cases--of facts--that addressed the issue.
Another place these evolving definitions are inscribed are the Restatements of various areas of the law. Restatements are books developed by legal publishers that summarize a lot of case law on a topic. They are considered persuasive, not binding authority for making decisions about legal problems, which means that judges are not required to abide by their principles, but should consider the principles seriously. Pages 132-134 of Behrens contains the section from the Restatement of Torts on the law of IIED. You will see that in the Restatement, the definitions of outrageous conduct are accompanied by illustrations--facts--that can be used as examples in determining whether a new set of facts meets the definition of outrageous conduct.
Being an attorney requires a lot of detective work to uncover the facts. We see this connection with detectives in a lot of lawyer shows on TV--most notably, perhaps, the Law and Order series where the shows are always about both the detectives "investigating the crimes" (ie., the facts) and the lawyers "who prosecute them" (ie., apply the law to the facts). A legal show that was on briefly a few years ago emphasized the factual investigation aspect of the law. The show was called "In Justice," and it was about a team of lawyers and detectives who helped people who had been wrongly convicted. The couple of episodes I saw focused entirely on identifying some crucial piece of evidence--some fact--that had been overlooked or unknown and that turned out to exonerate the wrongly convicted person.
The big assignment we are working toward is an opening statement for one of the IIED cases in this chapter. See the tab for major assignments for details.
Reading
- California Jury Instructions on IIED, pp. 119-20 Making the Case
- Arkansas Jury Instructions on Outrage (Arkansas's term for emotional distress) (Jury Instructions can be found on the Arkansas Judiciary website under the Forms and Publications tab)
- Restatement (Second) on IIED, pp. 132-134 Making the Case
- Cases on IIED in Group 1 and Group 2 of Chapter 3 of Making the Case, pp. 109-19, @ pp. 134 - 140
Activities
- Participate in a check-in Tuesday discussion in Bb.
- Participate in discussion 4.1 in Blackboard. Start by Thursday, February 14, 11:59 p.m. and complete by Sunday, February 17.