What is a Holding in a Court Case?
When you see a court case cited, you get a lot of information, including what court decided it, when, and the names of the parties. One of those bits of information is the holding of the decision. A holding is the generalization that a court makes – the broad statement of principle of law that the court uses to decide the case before it. A holding is not the outcome of the case. The holding of a case is important in a judicial decision because it is what makes a decision case law and makes later courts follow the opinion.
Holding is different from dictum. Dictum is language in an opinion that is more specific than a holding – it is a proposed rule that is based on the facts before the court and how the court applies the law to those facts. Dictum is the possible application of a holding. Dictum is not the holding of a decision or case law .
For example, if an appellate court rules that "Breach of contract is only actionable if the breach causes quantifiable damages to the plaintiff," then the court holding is that breach of contract is actionable only if the plaintiff has suffered quantifiable damages. The actual facts of the case were that the plaintiff had made a $1,000 loan to the defendant; the defendant had paid back only $100; and the plaintiff wanted to recover the remaining $900 that had not been paid. In dictum, the court says that, even though the plaintiff had suffered damages, those damages were not quantifiable. While the plaintiff may have indeed been caused a loss of $900, there was not a sufficient factual basis in the record for finding that fact to be quantifiable; in other words, the court is saying that the fact that the plaintiff lost $900 was not that relevant to the decision of a breach of contract case. Therefore, the court holds that the breach of contract was not actionable – it was not a case of law that the court needed to state for future courts to apply when faced with a similar situation.
The Difference Between Holdings and Dicta
In short, a holding is a court’s determination of a matter of law that is necessary to the resolution of a case. Dicta, on the other hand, does not contribute to the resolution of a case. The character of dicta as something peripheral or non—central to a decision is also reflected in its name—the Latin word dictum means "to say." On occasion, the line between what is a holding and what is dicta can be a little blurry. The fact that something is stated in a court opinion does not automatically make it a holding that is binding on lower courts or other litigants. To constitute a holding, the point addressed by the statement must have been presented by the record and decided by the court.
For example, a panel of appellate judges decides an appeal from a lower court decision and issues an opinion addressing the issues submitted to the court. The opinion explains how controlling law applies to the facts of the case. The appellate court’s legal analysis is binding on the parties to the underlying litigation that was appealed. Those legal principles and analyses articulated by the appellate court become—what we lawyers like to call—the holding of the appellate court.
An appellate opinion may also contain some portion of what is termed "dicta." For example, the panel, in the course of deciding the appeal, may address an upside down corollary argument that it chooses not to formally decide; or, the panel may comment on an open issue of law that is unnecessary to resolve the case before it. If that comment is ancillary to the holding, it is merely dictum. Dictum is oftentimes included in an appellate opinion to aid in our understanding of the holding. Dictum has no binding effect on the parties to the case or the courts that are subordinate to the issuing court. Nor are parties in other cases bound by such commentary in appellate opinions.
Why is it important for the legal practitioner to be able to distinguish between a holding and dictum? Because practitioners cite to appellate decisions for their holding. We may rely on an appellate court’s holding and use it in the course of presenting our client’s case, i.e., for persuasive purposes in briefs to higher courts and docket presentations to trial courts. Moreover, we are bound to follow the holding of the appellate courts that are ergonomically located to us, while we need not follow the holding of the other appellate courts.
To understand these concepts better, let’s take a look at a very basic illustration of a court’s holding and dicta in the form of an example. A statute makes it a Class C misdemeanor to obtain a huntress license by fraud. The State brings charges against a defendant for violating this statute and presents evidence to the trial court demonstrating that the defendant was never eligible for a huntress license but managed to obtain one through an incorrect date entry. The jury convicts the defendant and the trial court enters judgment. On appeal, the defendant argues that there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction because the evidence introduced at trial failed to demonstrate that he was in fact "deemed eligible" for a huntress license. In its opinion, the court of appeals holds "because the requirement in the statute is that the defendant was ‘deemed eligible’ for a huntress license at the time he applied for it, [the defendant’s] argument is without merit. . . . We have found no requirement in the statute that dictates that the State introduce evidence that the defendant actually meets that eligibility requirement."
In this opinion, the italicized words reflect the holding of the court. They are central to the case—it was necessary for the court to address this issue in order to resolve Mr. Voss’s appeal of the judgment against him. Any statements made in the preceding or subsequent paragraphs are not the holding of the appellate court and are not binding as to parties with different interests in litigation.
Famous Case Examples of Holdings
The holding of a case sets the tone for future cases and interpretations. Below are some examples of holdings in landmark cases.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483 (1954): One of the most important cases in United States Supreme Court history, this landmark decision outlawed racial segregation in schools. The holding states: "In the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, and therefore, the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are and will be deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment."
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963): In this case, the court stated that the accused are entitled to a defense attorney, whether they can afford one or not. The Sixth Amendment grants each criminal defendant the right to counsel. In a unanimous opinion, the court overruled Betts v. Brady, stating: "In Gideon’s case the Court’s refusal to appoint counsel was a violation of the Sixth Amendment, made applicable to state courts by the Fourteenth Amendment."
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973): In this case, the court ruled that women have a fundamental right to choose to terminate their pregnancies. They have the right to that choice through the first two trimesters. The holding states: "The right of privacy implied in the Fourteenth Amendment is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. This right, however, is not absolute and is subject to some state regulation."
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966): The Fifth Amendment grants Americans the right not to incriminate themselves and right to counsel. This court ruled that a suspect can’t waive these rights unless they are made aware of them first. The holding states: "[The] Fifth Amendment privilege applies in only those situations in which the suspect in response to an interrogation, is compelled to testify against himself."
Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015): The most recent landmark case established that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, even in states that have same-sex marriage bans on the books. The holding states: "Because the right to marry is fundamental, any exclusion from it and its accompanying rights burdens that right. It does so whether the involved state laws apply evenly to opposite-sex couples or whether they treat same-sex couples differently."
The Importance of a Court Holding for Precedent
As stated above, the "holding" of a court case is the legal principle that should be applied to a future case on a similar or identical issue. As such, holding is the basis by which cases can evolve and the law can develop without having to legislate as would be required if a case-by-case adjudication were not based upon any history. Put another way: even if the current case deviates from the previous decision (because of new information or litigation theory) substantial deference is given to the previous case, and that legal principle becomes precedent for future cases.
Therefore, the role of the holding in a case is to establish or narrow the scope of the principles used in court decisions . As time passes by, a holding can become refined, extended, or modified based upon new inquiry, and this evolution continues until the precedent is altered substantively by the legislature (which foregoes the judicial process). The result is the establishment of rules from decisions in cases that are similar – i.e. the body of law for that issue.
Thus, holdings are essentially a formula: if X, then Y. In doing so, the holding defines the scope and limitations of the principle(s) at issue. In the instance of an abuse of process matter, the holding may have been pure emotional harm to the plaintiff, or perhaps only emotional harm related to wrongful acts, or merely copious litigation taking place during a front-end transaction, or – as was the case most recently – all of the above (and more).
How To Interpret a Legal Holding in Case Research
The next step on the road to understanding a case involves untangling its holding within the opinion. At this stage in your case law review process, you should already know who the parties are, what court the case is published in, when it was decided and what the case is about, as well as which level of court has published the opinion.
While this might seem like a lot of work for a simple case law interpretation, it is worth it to ensure that you have gone through and exploited the entire process to get a full sense of how the lowest court in the state has ruled. Make no mistake, how the lowest court in the state reads the law is how the bar for expectation is set. Even a case post-appeal may not be enough to bring the bar of expectation high enough to escape the bar of expectation that surrounds the case at the trial court level. Untangling a holding requires some effort on your part. Even if the case where you got the holding doesn’t give you what you need, there are still ways to use it. The key to untangling a holding is to read it…again and over again. If just reading doesn’t help you find the holding, try retyping it. If that doesn’t help, try printing it and then crossing out every word in the opinion that does not indicate the holding in some form or fashion. If you are still having trouble, try reading the holding in reverse.
The point here is, do not try and read the case from beginning to end; it won’t work. Instead, focus on the holding and read only that portion. If you try to read the entire case by itself, without the holding and facts you will lose everything. When you find the holding, you now have to be able to cite it. A citation is the way legal practitioners tell each other where to go to find this or that holding. Here are the most common components of a case citation, which may or may not be present in your desired case citation: The format for a case citation is as follows: Name v. State Citation (Court, Year of Decision). The citation to a case is important because it tells you almost everything about a case. The first, the name of the parties, tells you who was involved in the case. The year and court tell you whether the case is still applicable to your needs and where to find it. Finally, there is the citation. This is the information that lets you find the exact piece of paper with the opinion you need on it. Any time you are dealing with a case citation, you always want to make sure that you don’t abbreviate the words that are part of the case citation. When you abbreviate words in legal writing, you will not be held to the statute or rule that governs the abbreviation, and therefore, you can still be sued.
How Holdings Affect Case Law
Effect of Holdings on Case Law
In the breadth of the case law, including rulings in the general jurisdiction and with district courts, the total number of holdings amounts to the thousands. While some rulings may have limited impact, others may serve as the seed for legal principles in the future. In fact, as a general practice, most holdings tend to be followed by later cases within the same jurisdiction. In this way, these holdings lead to the evolution of a jurisdiction’s statutes and sometimes even of the common law (i.e. statutes that are not based on a written code but rather passed down through precedent).
It is easy to see how holdings serve to evolve judicial systems and to address new legal principles as they arise: Edwin Ely, one of the founders of Harvard Law School and a professor there, wrote a series of books about case law and holdings in 1881. He outlined this impact by explaining that "[w]hen , for example, a party sues another by the common form of action known as debt, he may claim from the defendant either a specific sum of money or a specific piece of land. There is no reason at all to think that the court might prefer to have the property transferred in lieu of money. But if a litigant were to take his suit into court and ask that the defendant pay for his car, presumably there is no statutory support for such a claim and the judge is free to interpret the language of the lawsuit to decide whether the defendant should give the plaintiff his car." In this way, each individual case stands as a precedent for future claims related to the subject matter.
As such, holdings are often used to define a broader category of law or a legal principle or to better define the application of a statute. These holdings may also serve to further the original intent of a statute and to fill in the gaps where a statute is silent.