In Supreme Court decisions, is there any “official” purpose in providing dissenting opinions? Are dissenting opinions strictly for interest and scholarly pursuits, or do they have some potential impact on real-world law? Maybe somewhere in between?
It just allows the justices that didn’t agree with the majority to voice their reasons for not agreeing. Has no legal standing at all.
To be sure, dissenting opinions have no IMMEDIATE precedential value. On occasion, however, they have ULTIMATELY proved quite influential nonetheless. Justice do occasionally change their minds, and an especially persuasive dissent can carry the day the next time the same issue comes up. The fact that a dissent is issued allows practitioners before the Court to “keep score,” in effect, and identify how vulnerable the opinion that is filed today may be tomorrow or next term. A good many matters of great importance before the current Court have been decided by margins of 5-4; as vacancies occur and minds are changed, the outcome on those key issues could well shift. Dissenting opinions are instrumental in informing that process.
Just want to add something to RMat’s post. Oliver Wendell Holmes issued many famous dissenting opinions, which the USSCT later adopted as majority opinions. Learned Hand, who was a justice on the NY Appeals Court (never made it to the USSCT) also issued some famous dissenting opinions, which were adopted by the USSCT.
This came up just the other day…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=74067
Thanks! I am embarrassed to say that I completely missed that thread.:o And it’s an excellent one too.
(As an aside, I wonder whether perhaps I did see the title of the original thread out of the corner of my eye and thence formed my thread and question)
There are any number of important cases, the Dred Scott case is a obvious example, in which there is no clear cut majority decision, just a mishmash of opinions, concurring and dissenting, in which an ultimate result may be agreed to by a majority of the court but there is no majority for any particular rational for the decision.
Recent dissenting opinions in the US Sup. Ct. show a level of judicial, and maybe personal, animus that is unprecedented, even in the days preceding the Civil War. The apparent object of the dissenters is to place their view of the case on the record so that whatever persuasive weight it might have will be available in future cases and to influence the future make up of the court. Remember that the decisions of the Sup. Ct. are now and always have been much more about what this group of judges thinks the law and the powers of government should be rather than what the drafters of the Constitution thought they were doing. In the last analysis the Sup. Ct. is just as much a political body as Congress or the President; it is just more insulated from political change.
it’s also important to note that some cases don’t have a majority opinion, but rather only a plurality opinion. The opinion that becomes law is the one that the most justices could agree on. for example a 4-3-2 opinion has no majority (at least 5 of the 9 justices)… but the opinion of the plurality (4) is the lead opinion that becomes law.
Concurring opinions are another story… but that is off topic so i won’t go there.