The User's Mini-Guide
The documents that say what this course is actually asking you to do. Read the Mini-Guide itself in the first week — before the reading gets heavy, while you still have the time to change how you read. The next three are checklists and templates you will come back to all semester. The last two are about the people who wrote the opinions.
How to Read Constitutional Law Opinions — A User's Mini-Guide
Constitutional Law and Lawyering Skills
Model Constitutional Law Case Brief
Multiple-Choice Question Worksheet
Where these came from
The Mini-Guide was originally prepared by Francisco Valdés, Professor of Law and Dean's Distinguished Scholar at the University of Miami School of Law, and is used here with his permission. I have revised it over the years for this course. If a passage strikes you as unusually well made, the odds are good that it is his.
These are Constitutional Law documents by origin, and they are posted here too because the method does not change when the clause does. Everything the Mini-Guide says about sources, canons and the will / judgment distinction applies to a Free Exercise case exactly as it applies to a Commerce Clause case.