Opinions
Opinions in the judicial system serve as essential explanations of court decisions, primarily authored by judges in appellate courts. These written opinions form the basis for subsequent judicial decisions, embodying the principle of stare decisis, or "let the decision stand," which promotes consistency and predictability in the law. Various legal publishers compile these opinions into bound volumes known as reporters, with notable examples including the United States Reports for the U.S. Supreme Court and the Pacific Reporter for courts in the western United States.
Opinions generally fall into three categories: the majority opinion, written by a member of the majority of judges, concurring opinions, where a judge agrees with the result but not the reasoning, and dissenting opinions, which express disagreement with both the result and reasoning of the majority. Occasionally, courts issue per curiam opinions, which do not attribute authorship and are typically used for less controversial cases. With advancements in technology, many judicial opinions are now accessible online, making them available to a broader audience beyond traditional legal publishers. This framework of opinions is crucial for navigating the complexities of the law and understanding the court’s rationale behind each ruling.
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Opinions
SIGNIFICANCE: The judicial system generally expects judges who decide cases to explain their decisions in written opinions. The collected opinions of relatively important courts—state appellate courts and federal courts—form the bases for subsequent judicial decisions. Later courts strive to adhere to the results of previously published opinions in keeping with the judicial principle of stare decisis, which means, “let the decision stand.”
To facilitate the legal system’s reliance on previous opinions to guide subsequent ones, legal publishers have traditionally collected judicial opinions into bound volumes referred to generically as “reporters.” Reporters may collect all the opinions of a specific court, such as the United States Reports, which includes the opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Other reporters contain the opinions of courts in a particular geographic region, such as the Pacific Reporter, which includes opinions from the courts of California and other western states. Computerized databases and Internet sites now make most, if not all, reported opinions available to those without access to bound volumes of reporters.
In the U.S. judicial system appellate judges write most opinions. Appellate courts generally have three or more members, a majority of whom determine the outcome in particular cases. One member of this majority then typically writes the opinion explaining the result, or holding, of the case. This opinion is called the majority opinion. Sometimes a judge who agrees with the majority’s result in a case may nevertheless not agree with the reasoning offered by the majority opinion or may wish to explain the decision in some fashion other than that adopted by the majority. This judge may write what is referred to as a concurring opinion. A judge who disagrees not only with the reasoning of a case but with the result reached by the majority might write a dissenting opinion to express this disagreement. Finally, in a few cases judges may agree about a decision and publish a per curiam opinion, which bears the name of no particular author. Courts publish per curiam opinions most frequently to express decisions in minor or noncontroversial cases.
Bibliography
Amar, Akhil Reed. The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997.
Lewis, Thomas T., and Richard L. Wilson, eds. Encyclopedia of the U.S. Supreme Court. 3 vols. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2001.
"Opinion." Cornell Law School, August 2020, www.law.cornell.edu/wex/opinion. Accessed 8 July 2024.
"Opinions." Supreme Court of the United States, www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/opinions.aspx. Accessed 8 July 2024.
Rehnquist, William. The Supreme Court. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.