Opinions
¶
A document that resolves legal issues in a case and posits legal holdings.
Usually an opinion must have
position="majority"
to create holdings binding on any courts.- Parameters
name (str) – full name of the opinion, e.g. “ORACLE AMERICA, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GOOGLE INC., Defendant-Cross-Appellant”
name_abbreviation (str) – shorter name of the opinion, e.g. “Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc.”
citations (Iterable[str]) – citations to the opinion, usually in the format
[Volume Number] [Reporter Name Abbreviation] [Page Number]
first_page (Optional[int]) – the page where the opinion begins in its official reporter
last_page (Optional[int]) – the page where the opinion ends in its official reporter
decision_date (datetime.date) – date when the opinion was first published by the court (not the publication date of the reporter volume)
court (str) – name of the court that published the opinion
position (Optional[str]) – the opinion’s attitude toward the court’s disposition of the case. e.g.
majority
,dissenting
,concurring
,concurring in the result
author (Optional[str]) – name of the judge who authored the opinion, if identified
Test whether
other
is or contains aHolding
contradicted byself
.
Get all generic
Factor
s mentioned inself
.
Search recursively in holdings of
self
forFactor
withname
.
Record that this Opinion endorses specified
Holding
s.- Return type
None
Add
Holding
s to thisOpinion
from a sequence.- Parameters
holdings (
Iterable
[Union
[Holding
,Rule
]]) – a sequence ofHolding
s that thisOpinion
posits as valid in its own court or jurisdiction, regardless of whetherself
accepts that theinputs
correspond to the reality of the current case, and regardless of whether the court orders that theoutputs
be put into effect.text_links (
Optional
[Dict
[Union
[Factor
,Enactment
],List
[TextQuoteSelector
]]]) – mapping ofFactor
s to theOpinion
passages where they can be found. Can be obtained as the mentioned return value of one of the functions inauthorityspoke.io.readers
.context (
Optional
[Sequence
[Factor
]]) – an ordered sequence (probablydict
) of genericFactor
objects fromself
which will provide the context for the new holding in the present case.
Add one or more
Holding
s to thisOpinion
.This method passes its values to
posit_holding()
orposit_holdings()
depending on whether the holding parameter is oneHolding
or alist
.- Parameters
holding – a
Holding
that theOpinion
self
posits as valid in its own court or jurisdiction, regardless of whetherself
accepts that theinputs
of theHolding
correspond to the reality of the current case, and regardless of whether the court orders that theoutputs
of theHolding
be put into effect.text_links (
Optional
[Dict
[Union
[Factor
,Enactment
],List
[TextQuoteSelector
]]]) – mapping ofFactor
s to theOpinion
passages where they can be found. Can be obtained as the “mentioned” return value of one of the functions inauthorityspoke.io.readers
.context (
Optional
[Sequence
[Factor
]]) – an ordered sequence (probablydict
) of genericFactor
objects fromself
which will provide the context for the new holding in the present case.
- Return type
None
Get text passages where a
Holding
is linked toself
.
Find whether
self
’s holdings imply all the holdings ofother
.
Find whether
self
’s holdings implyother
’s but self != other.This actually tests for inequality because
Opinion
does not have ameans
method.- Return type
- Returns
self >= other and self != other.
Get text using a
TextQuoteSelector
.- Parameters
selector (
TextQuoteSelector
) – a selector referencing a text passage in thisOpinion
.- Return type
- Returns
the text referenced by the selector, or
None
if the text can’t be found.
Return str(self).
list of weak references to the object (if defined)