I learned that after deliberation, the justices collectively appoint one justice from the majority ruling to write the opinion on behalf of the supreme court that explains the legal reasons for the decision on the case. Opinion writing is the most tedious and time consuming part of the process for the justices.
On Top of the main appointed opinion draft, any justice can also write their own opinion draft on the same case. They can abide by the ruling but they can write their own legal reasoning for the verdict or can write a dissenting opinion, an opinion that does not agree with the majority opinion.
These opinions take a while to write, about four weeks on average. The drafts are sent to all the other justices to be read over and revised. Because there are different opinions on each case, the written opinion goes through many different drafts. The author of the opinion has to be able to satisfy all viewpoints of the other justices and re-drafts till all the justices are persuaded to support the opinion. This is the longest part of the revision process since the author has to make compromises for each justice.
One of the take-aways I had from the videos and is also one of the more surprising ideas I learned was the trust that the American people seemingly have in the supreme court and the decisions the supreme court justices make. Coming from over 200 years of legislative history, Americans accept the supreme court's judgment authority. There is always controversy with each decision, but after many years of the courts existence, they have seemingly earned the majority of the American people’s trust.
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