Discrimination case law analysis paper guide

The four bullets are a sequence and the last one carries the assignment's actual argument, so plan backwards from it. Identifying the case and summarizing what happened are reporting tasks that a reader can check; explaining how the findings apply to today's practices is the analytical task and the one the course is really assessing, since the framing sentence in the brief says that practices acceptable two decades ago could be prohibited now. Choose your case with that final bullet in mind. A case that produced a durable rule which employers still follow will give you something concrete to trace forward, whereas an obscure settlement with no published reasoning leaves the last bullet with nothing to say. Cases about selection procedures, testing, physical requirements, or promotion criteria tend to work particularly well for a talent management course, because the practice they constrain is one an employer still has to design today.

Identifying the case properly means more than naming it. Give the parties, the court, the year, and the statute or protected characteristic at issue, because a reader needs to know whether you are discussing a Supreme Court decision that binds nationally or a district court ruling that does not. Then explain the specific discrimination with precision, and this is where the most marks are lost. Disparate treatment and disparate impact are different legal theories with different proof structures: treatment means the employer acted because of a protected characteristic, whereas impact means a facially neutral practice fell more harshly on a protected group regardless of intent. Naming which theory the case turned on, and saying how the burden shifted between the parties, demonstrates that you read the case rather than a summary of it. If the case involved a mixed claim, say which theory carried the decision, since courts often dispose of one and leave the other undecided.

The issue, findings, and outcome should be three distinct things in your write-up rather than one narrative. The issue is the legal question the court had to answer; the findings are what it concluded and on what reasoning; the outcome is what actually happened to the parties and what rule survived. Then make the application specific to talent management practice: what a job analysis has to show, when a selection test needs validation evidence, how an employer documents a business necessity defence, what a structured interview changes about consistency. The requirement is a minimum of two scholarly or credible sources in addition to the text, so the case record and the enforcement guidance are not enough on their own. Keep the whole thing inside four pages, since a two- to four-page cap rewards choosing one case and going deep rather than surveying several. The title page has five named elements; losing marks there after that much analysis is needless.