A healthy democracy requires the preponderance of differing views, and those differences often lead to disputes that are resolved by the judiciary. In the service of resolving such disputes, the work of an appellate justice can be simply described as reading the law and applying it to the facts of a given case. You can imagine providing this explanation to a curious non-attorney at a social gathering and receiving the response: “Well how hard can that be? You just follow whatever the law says.”

Of course, the audience for this article is primarily attorneys, who understand the deceptive simplicity inherent in that description, and the countless complications that may arise in “reading the law and applying it to the facts.” Easier said than done. An attorney litigating a case must determine which law to read and, just as critically, which facts are most salient to the case. These considerations are equally relevant to the judges who determine the disputes that come before them.