Dissenting opinions are written by judges who disagree with the majority decision in a case. They explain their reasoning and can be used by other judges and legal scholars. Dissenting opinions are important if a subsequent court wants to overturn a verdict.
A dissenting opinion is one delivered by a judge who disagrees with what the other judges in the panel have decided. At both the appellate court level and the supreme court level in the United States, there are multiple judges deciding a single issue. The decision of the majority is the rule of law which applies in the case, and according to the doctrine of stare fecis, the decision of the majority becomes the law which applies in all similar situations unless or until a court of equal instance or higher level flips or cancels the opinion.
When the jury makes a decision on how a given law should be interpreted or applied, it doesn’t just write down the specific answer on how it should be applied. Instead, they write an opinion explaining their reasoning and how they arrived at a decision. This is done so that other judges, as well as law students, legal scholars, experts and individuals, can use the information to get an indication of how the law will apply to them. For example, if a judge decided a case as to whether a scooter constituted a vehicle for purposes of a law prohibiting vehicles in the park, the court would explain his reasoning as to exactly why he ruled a scooter constituted a vehicle in that special case. So someone wondering whether a bicycle also constituted a vehicle could examine that reasoning to decide whether or not the court was likely to also classify a bicycle as a vehicle.
The majority opinion is published in the case books and becomes law, but the dissenting opinions of judges who disagree with the majority are also published. In the dissenting opinion, the judge or judges who disagreed with the majority will write exactly why they disagreed with the majority. They may also include information about how they would have interpreted the law and decided the case.
The dissenting opinion is important in case a subsequent court wants to step in and overturn or reverse the verdict. A verdict or decision can be overturned by a court of the same level or higher. For example, another later appellate court might decide that the judges were wrong somewhere and overturn the method by which a given law is interpreted. However, a verdict can only be overturned by a higher court; for example, the US Supreme Court can overturn a decision made by the appellate court. When these successive courts read the case and decide what to do, they can consider the dissenting opinion to get a fuller view of how all the judges in the court have looked at the law, and can then decide what makes the most sense.
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