Law Commons^™

As A Matter Of Fact: Reasserting The Role Of Basic Facts In Veterans Court Jurisprudence, Jeffrey D. Parker

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Unique to legal literature, this article outlines the most basic and unsexy nature of fact finding at the lowest tribunal – what is decided by a lower tribunal after weighing the different stories and conflicting evidence, and after deciding which story to believe or which evidence has more value. While legal holdings and precedents are much more engaging to the legal mind, such legal “holdings” are heavily dependent upon the basic facts found for support. A legal rule without supporting facts is mere dicta, while a legal rule squarely derived from the facts forms a legal precedent.

This article identifies …