# "The Court of Appeals is where policy is made"?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-court-of-appeals-is-where-policy-is-made/498503>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 2, 2009, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-court-of-appeals-is-where-policy-is-made/498503 "2009-06-02T20:38:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\
**Post date:** [June 2, 2009, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-court-of-appeals-is-where-policy-is-made/498503/6 "2009-06-02T21:27:54Z")

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In the [Smooth Sailing for Sotomayor](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11182672) thread **Richard Parker** made a good post on this topic (more than I am quoting here which is just a bit of it).

> [@Smooth sailing for Sotomayor?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smooth-sailing-for-sotomayor/497675/113):
>
> Impact litigation focuses on getting into appellate courts, and that tends to be where the real battles lie, because the effect of a win in the district court doesn’t have the kind of impact that an appellate court has. Additionally, anything that is in a gray enough area of law to be good fodder for impact litigation will almost inevitably be decided by an appellate court. By virtue of working with more complicated, less settled issues, appellate courts also have to employ more subjective judgment. They have less precedent to rely on. They make law in a very real sense, and that law usually has important policy consequences. In that sense, they make policy.

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