Syllabus

(pronunciation) 🔗

I had only known the word “syllabus” from its usage in education, where it is roughly synonymous with “curriculum”. From Cambridge Dictionary 🔗:

(a plan showing) the subjects or books to be studied in a particular course, especially a course that leads to an exam

However, this week I learned of the legal definition of “syllabus” as the blog Techdirt published a post about the First Amendment 🔗 which linked to a couple of pages about court cases, and some those pages had a “syllabus” link in their sidebar, which each linked to a list of legal findings.

Miriam Webster defines “syllabus” 🔗 as the sense of “headnote” that means:

a note prefixed to the report of a decided legal case

The American Heritage Dictionary features a slightly different definition 🔗:

A summary or abstract of the legal rulings contained in a published judicial case opinion.

I can only assume that every lawyer has to learn this definition in law school. It would be a shame to leave it off the syllabus.