Exposing The U.S. Supreme Court’s

Secret

Decisions

June 23, 2014

 

The U.S. Supreme Court is legally

allowed to REVERSE and ALTER

their decisions after the fact,

without having to announce those changes to the public; this is called a “slip opinion.” DAVID ZVENYACH (General Counsel to the Council of D.C.) created a JavaScript application node that searches these decision alterations and posts them to Twitter for the world to see.

 

The court’s secretive editing process has led many judges and law professors astray, causing them to rely on passages that were later scrubbed from the official record. The widening public access to varying online versions of the court’s decisions, some of which do not reflect the final wording, has made the longstanding problem even more pronounced.

 

“In Supreme Court opinions, every word matters,” said Stanford law professor JEFFREY L. FISHER. “When they’re changing the wording of opinions, they’re basically rewriting the law.”

 

Zvenyach, along with fellow coder JOSHUA TAUBERER, have created software that brings these changes to the public’s attention by posting them to the project’s online social media account on Twitter.

 

All of the court changes that they find and post are STORED HERE for perpetuity as downloadable PDF's and text files.

 

 

~ MERIT