It's worth mentioning that while some parts of law can be really arcane (parents, terms of service, etc.), Supreme Court decisions are generally pretty readable.
Agreed! And the typography is perfect. I've enjoyed bypassing all the angles and bias of coverage and just reading the majority decision PDFs in full. As a layperson the implications of phrases do escape me, though. SCOTUS can get awfully terse.
Late in law school, I ended up writing a study guide for a multi-day Constitutional Law seminar for non-lawyers, and found that unpacking all of the legal turns of phrase and items that would carry huge implications when read by lawyers took between 3x and 15x the space of whatever segment I was unpacking, with an average around 7.5x-8x. And according to feedback that still ended up being a bit dense for most readers. Worst volunteer gig I've ever agreed to!
The dissenting opinions are also quite enlightening because they point out weaknesses in the majority and concurring opinions that might not be apparent to those of us outside the field.
By the time you see a published SCOTUS decision clerks have definitely checked all citations. The problem is that occasionally the source or interpretation is questionable/contentious.
You may be referring to the court's (and other appellate courts') long-standing practice of not second guessing a trial court's finding of what did or didn't happen, unless a "clear error" is demonstrated to have been committed by the trial court.
SCOTUS decisions and opinions, therefore, should not be construed as to concur with the trial court about what actually happened. They take it as granted that those things occurred, and provide the best legal resolution they can under those assumptions. The cases they hear aren't about determining "who did what". That's done and settled usually. They are about "what now?"
Mostly agree about Constitutional cases. Some of the less sexy statutory construction cases are written for a smaller audience, and even as a lawyer, if you don’t practice in that field, they can be pretty opaque.
I suppose that they are free to focus on readability when they don't have to structure their writing in order to defend their decision-making from anyone, being the highest court of the land.
A few points to the contrary: The primary purpose for their writing of opinions is not to defend the decisions, but to instruct lower courts on how they should reason on similar cases. So it very much matters on a practical level that their reasoning is sound. Second, if the goal is a cogent, defensible argument, readability is in support of that objective, whereas you suggest that readability is somehow (?) at odds with cogency and defensibility. Thirdly, the justices are keenly aware that the interested public consumes their opinions too, and that they are, in fact, ethically and morally bound to defend their decisions to the public.
Being the only non-democratically elected branch of government in a democracy, the courts don't enjoy direct approval from the people. So while the structure of the institutions seem to give them power, their authority ultimately hinges on whether people perceive their decisions fair and just.
When courts make unpopular decisions and can't explain why, there's always a risk of some constitutional crisis. If courts keep making decisions that they can't rationally defend, at some point their authority will begin to erode. (And if you followed the USSC rulings in recent years you might start to understand why. Maybe the resentment not yet directly targeted towards the courts, but those decisions did add fuel to the already divisive politics in the US.)
lelandfe|1 year ago
Matticus_Rex|1 year ago
kashunstva|1 year ago
The dissenting opinions are also quite enlightening because they point out weaknesses in the majority and concurring opinions that might not be apparent to those of us outside the field.
vundercind|1 year ago
throwup238|1 year ago
The Justices have made some bone headed mistakes, especially this last crop.
Matticus_Rex|1 year ago
cvoss|1 year ago
SCOTUS decisions and opinions, therefore, should not be construed as to concur with the trial court about what actually happened. They take it as granted that those things occurred, and provide the best legal resolution they can under those assumptions. The cases they hear aren't about determining "who did what". That's done and settled usually. They are about "what now?"
tiahura|1 year ago
Matticus_Rex|1 year ago
senkora|1 year ago
cvoss|1 year ago
hnfong|1 year ago
Being the only non-democratically elected branch of government in a democracy, the courts don't enjoy direct approval from the people. So while the structure of the institutions seem to give them power, their authority ultimately hinges on whether people perceive their decisions fair and just.
When courts make unpopular decisions and can't explain why, there's always a risk of some constitutional crisis. If courts keep making decisions that they can't rationally defend, at some point their authority will begin to erode. (And if you followed the USSC rulings in recent years you might start to understand why. Maybe the resentment not yet directly targeted towards the courts, but those decisions did add fuel to the already divisive politics in the US.)