Reference no: EM133148331

If you have any desire to go to law school or become a lawyer for Tom Cruise (or even if you don't), one skill that you will need to develop more than anything else is the ability to write in a clear and concise manner.  The ability to effectively communicate is essential.  One key aspect of effective communication is organization and structure.  For that, attorneys utilize what is called IRAC.  As discussed in the dedicated Canvas Page for Chapter 1 in the textbook, IRAC stands for the following:

• Issue
• Rule
• Analysis
• Conclusion

Please go back and review the Canvas Page that discusses IRAC one more time before proceeding further with this assignment.

For your first Case Analysis assignment, we are going to apply IRAC to White v. Benkowski.  Please read the decision issued by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin (access the case here Actions), which issued its original opinion on December 22, 1967.  If you are so inclined, there is a brief video summarizing the background of the case below.  Please note that in order to complete this assignment you will still need to read and understand the Supreme Court's ruling.

Your Assignment

After reading the Supreme Court decision, please identify the two key issues that the court discussed in its ruling.  To give you a hint, please do not focus on the two questions the trial court presented to the jury.  Once you have identified the two issues, I would ask that you prepare a brief document utilizing IRAC to analyze each issue.  If you have identified the two questions already, you have already determined the I in IRAC. Please remember that each issue gets its own independent IRAC - in other words your submission will have two IRACs. 

The rule, analysis and conclusion can be found within the four corners of the Supreme Court's ruling.  Everything is in black and white - there is no hiding of the ball.  My objective here is to make sure you understand how IRAC works and how to fill it out.