Reading cases: what? why? how?

In ordinary legal usage the word ‘case’ is ambiguous. We talk of ‘reading cases’, ‘citing cases’, ‘bringing cases’, ‘having a good case’, ‘winning cases’, ‘submitting no case to answer’ and so on. To bring a case against someone means to institute legal proceedings against him; to ask ‘have I a good case?’ probably means ‘have I a good chance of winning in legal proceedings?’. When we talk of looking up, citing or reading a case we are talking about a kind of document. Similarly in talking of interpreting cases it is helpful to think in terms of interpreting the rather specialised kind of document typically to be found in the law reports. For our purpose it is useful to adopt, with slight modification, the following definition:

This definition identifies the principal ingredients with which we are concerned when interpreting cases, namely a written report, of a dispute between legal persons, which came before a court (or other tribunal).