What are pattern jury instructions?
Like a Restatement, a collection of pattern jury instructions is a secondary source that restates the law in rule form. Unlike Restatements, however, pattern jury instructions come from multiple sources (e.g., groups of judges, bar associations, or supreme court committees) and they are based on actual instructions given to juries to instruct the jury members on the substantive law of a particular jurisdiction. Pattern jury instruction books attempt to collect the best and most reliable of these instructions from statutes or published cases. Pattern jury instructions have the virtue of being drafted in plain English so that juries composed of laypersons may understand them. This makes them a good background research tool for first-year law students or for an attorney who needs to explain the law to a client who is a layperson. There are numerous collections of pattern jury instructions – some covering federal law, some covering the law of a single state, and some covering specific subj
