In an absolutely broken office (coughThomascough), the clerks could theoretically be told how the justice intends to vote, then cut loose to do all the research, formulate all the arguments, and write the entire opinion to receive rubber stamping by the justice. The justice might then, again completely hypothetically, be free to fuck off to god knows where in his bus-sized RV and enjoy all the best things that billionaires have to offer their good friends who became their good friends after joining SCOTUS.
In a properly functioning office, clerks will do all those things only after having been tutored on a cogent judicial philosophy, informed of some of the primary caselaw the justice knows of/respects, and have the opinions significantly reviewed and reworked by the justices themselves. The whole thing will generally be very collaborative, but with a justice making a good faith effort to evaluate the case before them. That said, even when applying them in good faith, some of the justices have extremely naive and unworkable judicial approaches that result in needless cruelty and can break a government built around a very high-level and obsolete consitution that depended WAY more on custom and assumptions of good faith than we might have thought.
What effects do the judges opinions actual have? Is it literally just like a news paper opinion columm - formal soap box, or does the opinion actually change how things are done and have tangible impacts for how governance is actioned?
In many ways, they are the work and they are the effects. American legal education, especially in the first year of the three, is largely an exercise in analyzing and extrapolating from these opinions.
The opinions of the court announce the decision, but they also declare the reasoning, which determines how it will apply to similar situations not under litigation, sometimes pretty formally and possibly even with bright-line limitations. They also reveal the court’s thinking, inviting people to pursue similar logic in cases they may file.
For more complex cases, an opinion will even set some of this out in a test with specific steps in the analysis, or with certain required elements to apply (e.g. Miranda warnings). There was a recent case that will likely be hugely influential where some guy got his civil penalty undone, but the real meat of it is that the majority opinion said that federal regulatory agencies have no power to interpret their own subject matter, and instead must defer all ambiguities to judges. Maybe good from time to time, such as when utterly unqualified boors are running the agencies, but generally this is going to make it very difficult for government to be effective, and it comes specifically from what’s in the opinion.
Even dissenting opinions can be important, outlining the opposing way of thinking and sitting there ready to be used if a similar question comes before a court with a different generational or political makeup.
In an absolutely broken office (coughThomascough), the clerks could theoretically be told how the justice intends to vote, then cut loose to do all the research, formulate all the arguments, and write the entire opinion to receive rubber stamping by the justice. The justice might then, again completely hypothetically, be free to fuck off to god knows where in his bus-sized RV and enjoy all the best things that billionaires have to offer their good friends who became their good friends after joining SCOTUS.
In a properly functioning office, clerks will do all those things only after having been tutored on a cogent judicial philosophy, informed of some of the primary caselaw the justice knows of/respects, and have the opinions significantly reviewed and reworked by the justices themselves. The whole thing will generally be very collaborative, but with a justice making a good faith effort to evaluate the case before them. That said, even when applying them in good faith, some of the justices have extremely naive and unworkable judicial approaches that result in needless cruelty and can break a government built around a very high-level and obsolete consitution that depended WAY more on custom and assumptions of good faith than we might have thought.
What effects do the judges opinions actual have? Is it literally just like a news paper opinion columm - formal soap box, or does the opinion actually change how things are done and have tangible impacts for how governance is actioned?
In many ways, they are the work and they are the effects. American legal education, especially in the first year of the three, is largely an exercise in analyzing and extrapolating from these opinions.
The opinions of the court announce the decision, but they also declare the reasoning, which determines how it will apply to similar situations not under litigation, sometimes pretty formally and possibly even with bright-line limitations. They also reveal the court’s thinking, inviting people to pursue similar logic in cases they may file.
For more complex cases, an opinion will even set some of this out in a test with specific steps in the analysis, or with certain required elements to apply (e.g. Miranda warnings). There was a recent case that will likely be hugely influential where some guy got his civil penalty undone, but the real meat of it is that the majority opinion said that federal regulatory agencies have no power to interpret their own subject matter, and instead must defer all ambiguities to judges. Maybe good from time to time, such as when utterly unqualified boors are running the agencies, but generally this is going to make it very difficult for government to be effective, and it comes specifically from what’s in the opinion.
Even dissenting opinions can be important, outlining the opposing way of thinking and sitting there ready to be used if a similar question comes before a court with a different generational or political makeup.