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🚀 How to read a Supreme Court case: 10 tips for nonlawyers | Ilisabeth S. Bornstein for The Conversation

The opinion is generally made up of four parts: the facts, the issue, the holding and the reasoning. These parts may not be specifically identified with headers, but they are the main ingredients of the opinion. Here’s what each part means.

Facts: This is a summary of who is suing whom about what and why. It may also describe which lower court or courts decided the issue and how it was decided before the case arrived at the Supreme Court. You’ll find the facts at the beginning of the opinion.

Issue: This is the question the court is being asked to decide. It might be located at the start of the opinion or at the end of the facts. Sometimes, there may be more than one issue. To find the issue(s), look for key phrases like: The question before us is … We are asked to decide if … We consider the question whether …

Holding: This is the court’s answer to the question(s) posed. This answer will serve as precedent to guide future cases on this topic at both the Supreme Court as well as lower courts. Sometimes the holding can be found right after the issue. Other times, it appears much later in the opinion or at the end. Some key phrases identifying the holding: Therefore we conclude … We hold … We find …

Reasoning: Most of the opinion will be the reasoning. The reasoning explains how the court reached its holding. The court may explain which existing precedent – holdings from prior Supreme Court cases – applies. The court may also spend time explaining how to interpret language in a federal statute or balance conflicting rights, such as one person’s right to privacy and another person’s right to free speech.

🚀 US Supreme Court reconsiders longstanding doctrine on agency power

Liberal justices argued that agencies’ experts, rather than judges, were often best placed to craft rules. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that striking out Chevron could turn judges into policymakers. “There’s a real separation of powers danger here,” she said. “I’m worried about the courts becoming uber-legislators.”

If the Chevron doctrine were overturned, rules “are much more likely to be invalidated by a court, and so the agency will have to be much more careful about which options to choose and how it selects between various possibilities”, said Jonathan Masur, professor at the University of Chicago’s Law School. Federal courts would also have more power to determine whether rules fit their interpretation of a statute.

I’m not sure I grasp the whole implication of this debate, but I’d say that less regulatory discretion for the executive branch and a stronger judicial oversight is good for the balance of powers and the rights of the people as it furthers the control of the administrative activity. What’s wrong about agencies having to be “much more careful about which options to choose”?

Sandra Day O’Connor, first woman on the Supreme Court, dies : NPR

O’Connor served on the court for a quarter of a century and, after that, became an outspoken critic of what she saw as modern threats to judicial independence.

While on the court, O’Connor was called “the most powerful woman in America.” Because of her position at the center of a court that was so closely divided on so many major questions, she often cast the deciding vote in cases involving abortion, affirmative action, national security, campaign finance reform, separation of church and state, and states’ rights, as well as in the case that decided the 2000 election, Bush v. Gore – a decision she later hinted she regretted.

Sid tibi terra levis.

This is a loose translation of an alleged Venetian proverb from 1610:

To achieve justice you need
the bag of a banker,
the patience of a hermit,
to be right,
to know how to explain you are right,
to find someone who listens
and wants to acknowledge you are right,
and a debtor who can pay.

The source, a judge with a very known and brilliant blog in Spain, has it in Spanish:

Para hacer justicia hace falta
Bolsa de banquero,
Paciencia de ermitaño,
Tener razón
Saberla exponer
Encontrar quien la escuche
Y se la quiera dar
Y deudor que pueda pagar.