The Case Comment: A Worked Example from Start to Finish

In one line

A case comment takes one judgment, states exactly what it decided, and then says whether the court was right and what follows.

In exam wording: a case comment is a short critical analysis of a single decision, distinguishing the material facts, the issue, the ratio decidendi and the obiter dicta, and evaluating the reasoning and its consequences.

The four things a comment must do

A comment that does the first two and stops is a summary, and that is the mark students most often lose.

1. Report what the court decided, accurately and briefly.
2. Separate the ratio from the rest, which is the technical skill being tested.
3. Evaluate the reasoning: is it right, is it consistent with what came before, does it prove what it claims.
4. Say what follows: for litigants, for lower courts, for the statute, for the next case.

Ratio and obiter: getting this right is the whole exercise

Ratio decidendi is the rule of law on which the decision actually rests. It is what binds under Article 141 of the Constitution.

Obiter dictum is anything the court said that the decision did not need. It persuades; it does not bind.

The practical test is subtraction. Take the proposition out. Could the court still have reached the same result? If yes, it is obiter. If the result collapses, it is ratio.

Two traps:

The headnote is not the ratio. Headnotes are written by reporters, not judges, and they compress. A comment that argues with a headnote argues with a stranger.

Length is not weight. A court can spend twenty paragraphs on history and one on the point that decides the case. Chaufal spends most of its length on the three phases of public interest litigation, and its operative holding is eight numbered directions near the end.

The shape of a comment

Journals vary; this shape is safe.

1. Heading. Case name, citation, court, date, bench. Nothing else.

2. Facts, in a paragraph. Only the material facts, meaning the ones the decision turns on. If a fact could change without changing the outcome, leave it out.

3. The issue, as a question. One sentence, framed so it can be answered yes or no or in one of two ways. Getting the issue wrong makes everything after it wrong.

4. The decision and the reasoning. What the court held and why, in its own structure. Quote sparingly and exactly.

5. Analysis. The part that makes it a comment. Was the reasoning sound? Does it fit the earlier authorities? Did the court answer the question it set itself? Was there a better route to the same result?

6. Consequences. What changes now.

7. Conclusion. Two or three sentences.