Judicial Opinion = Research Paper?

I finally had a chance to read Pennoyer v Neff, the case that was discussed in the CivPro class that I sat in on when I visited U of R. This is the first judicial opinion that I have ever read. I have read hundreds of chemistry research papers (some a little more closely than others, of course), and I can't help but compare one to the other.

Once you get past the differences in content, subject matter, and jargon/language, there are some similarities to a judicial opinion and a research paper. They have a very similar structure. A case, at least Pennoyer v Neff, starts out with an overview of how the case got to SCOTUS, gives a little info on the issues, and then the judge takes over and discusses the decision and how that decision was reached. I felt like I was reading the typical intro, methods, results, discussion, conclusion organization that is common to research papers. It made me feel like I was on semi-familiar ground reading something that is totally new to me. I like to think that my graduate school training will be useful in law school, and finding some dash of familiarity in a complex Supreme Court ruling has given a small boost to my delusion. I've been told that my training will help in a meta kind of way, but it's nice to see that the benefits may be a little more tangible.

Reading the case has also made me feel better about how much time was put into the details of the case during the class discussion. Now I can see the need to make sure that the facts of the case are understood before moving on to the larger implications of the case. There was no discussion of the the dissent in the class, but reading through the dissent emphasized the key parts of the decision. I felt like I had a decent handle on the main points of the case after working through some statements in the dissent. I'll be sure to keep that in mind once I start reading these things for real.

(Note: I'm not on my regular computer. I'll add links once I can use Mozilla instead of Explorer. Links added, although I thought I would be adding more when I wrote the post.)