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One of the things I would encourage people to do, even if they are not lawyers is to actually read the supreme court opinions for yourself. Anybody, no matter

One of the things I would encourage people to do, even if they are not lawyers is to actually read the supreme court opinions for yourself. Anybody, no matter if you agree or disagree with their political leanings, who actually makes it to the US Supreme Court is crazy smart, and in general a good writer. In addition, they are assisted by really smart clerks. Because of this, their opinions tend to be quite readable and and many times quite entertaining (regardless of your political persuasion, the late Antonin Scalia wrote some memorable opinions). Democracy really does work best if the average person takes time to learn about their government and the issues. Reading through Supreme Court judgements, concurrences, and dissents, is actually quite accessible and is a very nice summary of the arguments for and against a position, as well as how the judges are intepreting the hundreds of years of jurisprudence and precedents.

simonh 5y ago
I agree completely, and I'm not even a US citizen. Nevertheless a lot of decisions made in the US have global reach and I find it useful to have a working knowledge of the US political and legal system. Some of it is bonkers, I have to say, but it has reasons (both good and bad) for being so and often these reasons bubble up to the top in SCOTUS decisions.
jan_Inkepa 5y ago
The legibility of American supreme court rulings is really wonderful and a US national treasure - the democratic value of having judgements be scrutable to citizens probably shouldn't be underestimated. Scalia was in particular an amazing stylist. I remember deciding to check out supreme court proceedings for the UK and finding them absolutely impenetrable in comparison. I wonder if countries with very different legal systems (e.g. France, which doesn't have such an emphasis on common law / legal precedent to my understanding) have more readable/accessible-to-non-professionals judgements/proceedings still.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  I think relatively weak Constitutional power of the Supreme Court led to this. The President has control of Military and Law Enforcement. Congress has the power of the purse. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, was relatively weak, until John Marshall and subsequent Justices basically persuaded everyone that it was the final arbiter of what the Constitution said. The Supreme Court’s power ultimately rests on its ability to persuade and thus I think it has developed a culture of trying to to give good reasons for its decisions to the general public.
tialaramex 5y ago
> Because of this, their opinions tend to be quite readable and and many times quite entertaining (regardless of your political persuasion, the late Antonin Scalia wrote some memorable opinions). However they're too often terrible law, because they do mental backflips to support their desired political outcome. Compare all of the "United States v. Windsor" opinions (both Kennedy's majority decision and the dissents from Scalia, Roberts and Alito) with Posner's decision in Baskin v Bogan + Wolf v Walker a year later. The former are bad law. Windsor isn't in front of the court because Edith Windsor's injury hasn't been cured in the lower courts, or because the US government is seriously trying to undo that cure. It's politics. She got her money, that was all settled in a lower court much earlier. The US Supreme Court granted certiorari and then a majority cobbled together this vague, murky document solely for a political end. They even pretend not to really notice that the US government's side of the argument is conspicuously not being represented by said government. But the dissents don't stop at pointing at this ridiculous charade, or even foreshadowing (Scalia talks about "waiting for the other shoe" to drop and sure enough the Obergefell was before that same court only a couple of years later) they offer equally ridiculous rationales for the opposing point of view. Scalia in particular seems ready to bend over backwards to imagine Congress has legitimate purpose in doing things its members explicitly tell the public are for an illegitimate purpose. In contrast Posner's decision is wonderfully clear. For example, at one point he imagines a hypothetical tax on women (but not men), of just $2, and he says a government ought to show a "compelling reason" for such a tax or else it is discriminatory and must be struck even though $2 is hardly a grave injury - because the discrimination is the problem, not the weight of the tax, and it is the discrimination which must be assessed against any benefit of that discrimination. He explains his intent to examine the cases before him (which both basically go like this: "Gay marriage is illegal in our state because of children") on that basis, and of course on that basis they come up very short indeed. Like Windsor the cases are on appeal, but the success of state attorneys here would actually have had a material impact, since the decisions they were appealing actually strike state laws that try to exclude gay marriage. Whether you could actually get married in those states depended (to some extent) on Posner's decision.
alistairSH 5y ago
I'd add to this - if you're ever in DC and doing the tourist thing (or just have a free day), attending a hearing at the Court can be quite entertaining. As noted, the justices are wicked smart. The back and forth with the lawyers is great. And the language used is usually comprehendible by non-lawyers. Same comment applies to Congress, but most hearings aren't nearly as entertaining. But, it's worth it just to see how the sausage is made. And catch a ride on the Senate's private subway.
JackFr 5y ago
In an interview with Scalia asked which was his favorite opinion to have written apart from the legal issues at hand, he brought up Community Nutrition Institute v. Block for its clever opening: “This case, involving legal requirements for the content and labeling of meat products such as frankfurters, affords a rare opportunity to explore simultaneously both parts of Bismarck’s aphorism that ‘No man should see how laws or sausages are made.’”
h2odragon 5y ago
See also the Annotated Constitution [1]; which gathers the decisions together with the parts of the constitution the interpret. Immense resource for understanding how our country runs. [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/ https://constitution.congress.gov/

simonh 5y ago

I agree completely, and I'm not even a US citizen. Nevertheless a lot of decisions made in the US have global reach and I find it useful to have a working knowledge of the US political and legal system. Some of it is bonkers, I have to say, but it has reasons (both good and bad) for being so and often these reasons bubble up to the top in SCOTUS decisions.

jan_Inkepa 5y ago

The legibility of American supreme court rulings is really wonderful and a US national treasure - the democratic value of having judgements be scrutable to citizens probably shouldn't be underestimated. Scalia was in particular an amazing stylist. I remember deciding to check out supreme court proceedings for the UK and finding them absolutely impenetrable in comparison. I wonder if countries with very different legal systems (e.g. France, which doesn't have such an emphasis on common law / legal precedent to my understanding) have more readable/accessible-to-non-professionals judgements/proceedings still.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
I think relatively weak Constitutional power of the Supreme Court led to this. The President has control of Military and Law Enforcement. Congress has the power of the purse. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, was relatively weak, until John Marshall and subsequent Justices basically persuaded everyone that it was the final arbiter of what the Constitution said. The Supreme Court’s power ultimately rests on its ability to persuade and thus I think it has developed a culture of trying to to give good reasons for its decisions to the general public.

tialaramex 5y ago

> Because of this, their opinions tend to be quite readable and and many times quite entertaining (regardless of your political persuasion, the late Antonin Scalia wrote some memorable opinions). However they're too often terrible law, because they do mental backflips to support their desired political outcome. Compare all of the "United States v. Windsor" opinions (both Kennedy's majority decision and the dissents from Scalia, Roberts and Alito) with Posner's decision in Baskin v Bogan + Wolf v Walker a year later. The former are bad law. Windsor isn't in front of the court because Edith Windsor's injury hasn't been cured in the lower courts, or because the US government is seriously trying to undo that cure. It's politics. She got her money, that was all settled in a lower court much earlier. The US Supreme Court granted certiorari and then a majority cobbled together this vague, murky document solely for a political end. They even pretend not to really notice that the US government's side of the argument is conspicuously not being represented by said government. But the dissents don't stop at pointing at this ridiculous charade, or even foreshadowing (Scalia talks about "waiting for the other shoe" to drop and sure enough the Obergefell was before that same court only a couple of years later) they offer equally ridiculous rationales for the opposing point of view. Scalia in particular seems ready to bend over backwards to imagine Congress has legitimate purpose in doing things its members explicitly tell the public are for an illegitimate purpose. In contrast Posner's decision is wonderfully clear. For example, at one point he imagines a hypothetical tax on women (but not men), of just $2, and he says a government ought to show a "compelling reason" for such a tax or else it is discriminatory and must be struck even though $2 is hardly a grave injury - because the discrimination is the problem, not the weight of the tax, and it is the discrimination which must be assessed against any benefit of that discrimination. He explains his intent to examine the cases before him (which both basically go like this: "Gay marriage is illegal in our state because of children") on that basis, and of course on that basis they come up very short indeed. Like Windsor the cases are on appeal, but the success of state attorneys here would actually have had a material impact, since the decisions they were appealing actually strike state laws that try to exclude gay marriage. Whether you could actually get married in those states depended (to some extent) on Posner's decision.

alistairSH 5y ago

I'd add to this - if you're ever in DC and doing the tourist thing (or just have a free day), attending a hearing at the Court can be quite entertaining. As noted, the justices are wicked smart. The back and forth with the lawyers is great. And the language used is usually comprehendible by non-lawyers. Same comment applies to Congress, but most hearings aren't nearly as entertaining. But, it's worth it just to see how the sausage is made. And catch a ride on the Senate's private subway.

JackFr 5y ago

In an interview with Scalia asked which was his favorite opinion to have written apart from the legal issues at hand, he brought up Community Nutrition Institute v. Block for its clever opening: “This case, involving legal requirements for the content and labeling of meat products such as frankfurters, affords a rare opportunity to explore simultaneously both parts of Bismarck’s aphorism that ‘No man should see how laws or sausages are made.’”

h2odragon 5y ago

See also the Annotated Constitution [1]; which gathers the decisions together with the parts of the constitution the interpret. Immense resource for understanding how our country runs. [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/ https://constitution.congress.gov/