Organizing Legal Arguments Using IRAC CRAC or other variations for internal memoranda and briefs

IRAC: The IRAC structure helps the reader to follow the complex reasoning process involved in supporting a legal conclusion: I Identification of the issue R Rule of law (for that particular issue) with explanation: Rule Statement Rule Explanation A Application of the law to new facts (your client’s), including counter-analysis C Conclusion on that particular issue

Issues Examples: “ Whether Florida's Marriage statute and state constitutional amendment defining marriage in such a way as to not recognize same-sex marriages from other states violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution.” “Whether Utah’s refusal to issue a marriage license to people seeking legal recognition of a polygamous relationship between a man and two women violates the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment by discrimination on the basis of religion and having a disparate impact on people from minority cultural heritage.”

Rules: Statutes and Caselaw Examples: “In as much as marriage is the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.” Florida Const. Art. I, New Section (Proposition 2) “A person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person.” Utah Code Ann. § 76-7-101(1) (2003).

Application Example In May 2006, the Utah Supreme Court again upheld the constitutionality of Utah’s bigamy statute. State v. Holm, 137 P.3d 726 (Utah 2006). The State of Utah convicted polygamist Rodney Holm under the bigamy statute for his participation in a 1998 “spiritual marriage” to Ruth Stubbs. Holm invoked Lawrence v. Texas, to support his defense that the state could not constitutionally interfere with his choice to consummate his intimate relationship with Stubbs. See, 539 U.S. 558 (2003). In Lawrence, a majority of the United States Supreme Court held that a Texas statute criminalizing sodomy violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and, absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects, consenting adults enjoy the freedom to define their private intimate relationships within “the confines of their homes and their own private lives.” Writing for the majority, Justice Matthew Durrant argued that the framers of the Utah State Constitution intended the bigamy statute to criminalize not only attempts to gain legal recognition of duplicative marital relationships, but also attempts to form duplicative marital relationships that are not legally recognized. Durrant cited Reynolds v. United States, an 1879 United States Supreme Court ruling that upheld the prosecution of a religiously motivated Utah polygamist, and asserted that a state statute may restrict an individual’s free exercise of religion as long as the statute does not impact people of different religious faiths differently. See, 98 U.S. 145 (1878).

Conclusion Examples “The state of Utah maintains it’s anti bigamy statutes does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment.” “At this time, there is no recognized federal mandate that would obligate the state of Florida to recognize same sex marriages.”

CRACK Identification of the issue in the form of a conclusion Instead of merely identifying the point under discussion, you can instead draft the topic sentence in the form of your conclusion on the issue. This option may, in fact, be more helpful to your reader. Example: “Although previous cases have failed to recognize how denying the right to marry to same-sex couples violates the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, careful examination of the issue indicates that marriage is a fundamental right and should be protected.”

Looking at Examples Go to http://www.sixthcircuitappeals.com/samplebrief1.htm l Find “LEGAL ARGUMENT--THE IMAGE FILES IN QUESTION WERE NOT OBTAINED ILLEGALLY BECAUSE THEY WERE OBTAINED DURING THE COURSE OF A LEGAL SEARCH PURSUANT TO A SEARCH WARRANT” and read the first section of the argument. Did the example use IRAC, CRACK or a variation?