Supreme Court decisions – presented arguments vs. Justice’s opinions

[barbitu8]

@md2000

A lower court judge is obliged to follow the law and established precedent in making their decision; I remember talking to one lawyer who said that occasionally buried in many rulings overturning lower court rulings is the subtle dig to tell the lower judge to smarten up. One thing smart lawyers/judges are, they are masters of the english language and quite capable of wording any innuendo so it can sound innocent.

Lower courts, like the supreme court, will tend not to ignore precedent but rather to explain why one may apply differently in this particular case. Then, a higher court may critique that logic.

You know a higher court is going to overrule a lower court’s decision when that judge is referred to “as the learned judge.”

Brown overturned Pleussy v Ferguson, but the opinion was unanimous due only to Justice Warren’s prodding of the other justices, and still would not have been unanimous except for the timely demise of one justice, much to the relief of Warren. But a distinction between two cases was made. Pleussy involved the railroad and Brown pertained to schools. IIRC, some of the justices were to make that distinction, but Warren beseeched them to overturn Pleussy.

[Christopher_Robin_Davies]

@AK84

Actually a final judgement to their cases can be attacked vide a Petition for rehearing. Although 99.99 percent of these are dismissed.

But in the case of the U.S. Supreme Court, there is no higher court to appeal to so if the petition you are talking about really exists it is going to the court itself which means my original point stands.

[isaiahrobinson]

@erislover

Since this one seems to be settled, I’d like to add on a question which might actually be related. Is this the reason behind justices adding their own dissenting opinions? In some cases the dissenting opinions have seemed to make extremely solid remarks (better logic than presented in the consensus opinion) and it makes me wonder what the function of these are. Is it ego placation? Laying the groundwork for overturning the case later? Trying to nudge lower courts to apply the ruling less broadly?

All of those things in part. A strong dissent from a Supreme Court judge means a lot in the legal world. People will talk about it, academics might write that they agree it, later courts might overturn the majority decision and adopt the reasoning in your dissent instead, courts in other jurisdictions might agree with and adopt it, inferior courts might be more likely to distinguish the majority’s decision in other cases (although technically they shouldn’t).

Some of the most famous judgments were dissents; in England Lord Atkin dissented with the majority opinion in Liversidge v Anderson [1942] which had decided to allow the British executive to imprison citizens if they felt they had “reasonable cause” without the usual judicial process during World War II. His dissent is moving and has been widely approved and followed since:

[QUOTE=Lord Atkin]
In England, amidst the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace. It has always been one of the pillars of freedom, one of the principles of liberty for which on recent authority we are now fighting, that the judges are no respecters of persons and stand between the subject and any attempted encroachments on his liberty by the executive, alert to see that any coercive action is justified in law.
[/QUOTE]

This is a good, short blog piece in the Guardian about dissents.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Lord Atkin just might have read the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866):

“…The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false, for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it which are necessary to preserve its existence, as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority…”

[Noel_Prosequi]

There are limitations to the idea that a court can do what it wants. If a plaintiff brings a misconceived action for breach of contract that might have succeeded in tort, then a judge might well hint to the plaintiff’s lawyers that they have problems in one that evaporate in the other, but will not decide the case for the plaintiff despite his pleadings (unless the plaintiff is persuaded to amend). This is because a judge should not “descend into the arena”. Further, the defendant is entitled to defend the case actually brought against him, not something the judge might think up after all the argument is over and it is too late to be heard on the point. Usually, if a judge is going to do something that is tangential to the way the parties have run the case, he will say so and give both sides an opportunity to be heard.

Exactly where the boundary is between cases in which a court can act of its own motion and cases where it will not is complex.