Download Rhetorical purpose and value of Supreme Court opinions

Form and Rhetorical purpose of Supreme Court opinions
This document is the ‘opinion of the court’ in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette
(1943). Like all majority opinions, it is written by one of the justices who voted with the majority when the
case was decided by a 6-3 majority. This majority opinion was written by Justice Robert H. Jackson, on
behalf of Chief Justice Stone and Associate Justices Rutledge, Black, Murphy, and Douglas. Three Associate
Justices dissented: Reed, Roberts, and Felix Frankfurter, who wrote the majority opinion in the case that
Barnette overturned: Minersville School District vs. Gobitis.
Majority opinions are momentous, and often alter the law of the land. The central purpose of the
majority opinion is to explain the reasoning of the justices whose opinion prevailed. Like most writing, a
majority opinion has other purposes. A reader should be alert to these purposes.
A majority opinion must fulfill ceremonial requirements. It is the report and verdict of a legal
proceeding. The vote and decision must be explicitly stated. The document must adhere to the standard form.
It can omit no particulars: properly citing cases and references, noting sources and terms, listing participants,
parties to the case, votes cast, and so on. This is the most obvious purpose. In most cases, these purposes are
all readers require, and so often these purposes are all readers notice.
A majority opinion also serves the purpose of presenting the argument that prevailed in order to outline
its legal principles for at least three critical audiences. The first is The Supreme Court itself, which can
review a Supreme Court decision. The legislative and executive branches need to understand the reasoning to
avoid violating the intent of the decision, and risking another contrary verdict. Unless the case is ‘narrowly
decided’ or is a ‘limited opinion’ (see below for examples) the opinion guides lower court judges who are
bound to use Supreme Court rulings to make their own rulings. It’s the nature of the law that new cases are
rarely a perfect match with existing Supreme Court rulings, so the principles behind the decision are
necessary to help lower court judges to make a decision that will not be overturned. Furthermore, the
decisions can help citizens to make decisions that will keep them within the law (or will help them bring a
case that will challenge or ‘test’ a Supreme Court ruling.)
Barnette is a great example of the latter, which is what identifies it as a ‘landmark’ ruling. Many
people, and many school boards (to name a few organizations), were unhappy with this ruling. Most
conformed to it and coped with their feelings, but others scrutinized the wording of the majority opinion,
looking for loopholes that might allow them to continue doing the things that Barnette ruled were
unconstitutional.
In a related purpose, majority opinions usually attempt to extend the relevant principles into the future,
to phrase and state those principles so they will be clear when applied to events and ideas that can’t be fully
anticipated. The Justice who writes the majority opinion is expected to construct careful, durable structures of
logic, because extending the tenets of the Constitution into areas that the Framers could not have anticipated
is often unpopular—it is sometimes called ‘judicial activism,’ not a flattering term.
There is also a personal purpose. Majority opinions are a kind of celebration—muted and subtle, but a
celebration nevertheless—by the victor. Supreme Court justices are powerful figures with strong ideological
identifications. When they write for the majority in an important case, they can be expected to strive for
words that will resonate and elevate their contribution to history. When an opinion overturns a previous
decision, or overrules some claim articulated in a previous majority opinion (as Barnette does), the writer
must argue not only the supremacy of the current argument but the weaknesses in the precedent argument.
That is, the opinion attacks the previous opinion and condemns an equal judge’s reasoning. Comparing it to a
debate is a faulty analogy, since the majority opinion is written by a justice who has already won the
question—for the moment.
In such cases, a final purpose is often discernable. Most decisions are not unanimous, which means the
majority opinion usually has a minority counterpart—the reasoning of a justice who disagrees, either a
‘dissent’ from a justice here and now, or a past decision’s ‘majority opinion.’ These disagreements can be
heated and bitter, so alert readers should seek evidence of another purpose: the expression of rejection and
even contempt for the other. Not just rebuttal but rebuttal with prejudice. The history of Supreme Court
opinions is full of such writing (though it can be hard to find among the other purposes.) Usually that
personal disdain is wasted on a justice long dead and retired into history books and law libraries. But Justices
serve for life, so upon occasion the writer of a majority opinion has occasion to overturn and to rebut, with
prejudice, a past opinion written by a justice who is still a sitting member of the same court. This is precisely
what happens in Barnette, which overturns Gobitis—a case from the same place, on the same topic, decided
only two years before.
Readers probably do not expect drama in this document—but it’s there!
The vote in a supreme court case matters. Decisions that are close—5-4—are considered ‘narrowly
decided’ and are generally considered to be less influential on law or policy. Unanimous decisions (Brown v.
Board of Education et al was decided 9-0) can establish a much stronger mandate. Decisions that overturn a
previous case have a different effect than those which affirm lower court or previous Supreme Court
decisions. But the vote total is not the most decisive consideration in evaluating a case; the majority opinion
is. Even wide votes such as 9-0 or 8-1 can be issued with narrow opinions or even opinions that are explicitly
presented as applying only to this particular case; Bush v. Gore, which ended recounts in Florida in the 2000
Presidential Election, was such a ‘limited’ decision, a decision that theoretically applied only to that specific
situation (though later cases have tried to make use of that decision). ‘Landmark’ decisions—those that
significantly change the laws of the land—are mainly dependent on the reasoning in the opinions. Therefore a
Supreme Court opinion may be the most influential and important rhetoric in the nation.