A court decision is a judicial determination of parties’ rights and obligations reached by a judge based on facts and law. The term is often used interchangeably with ruling, judgment and opinion. Decisions also include orders, which instruct the parties on matters that should be done.
The Supreme Court is asked to review about 7,000 cases each year. Typically, it will only take on a case if the case was already decided in another U.S. Court of Appeals or in the highest court in a given state (if the case involved a Constitutional issue). Once the Justices accept a case, they decide on how to resolve the dispute. Generally, the Court will “follow precedent” – that is, it will use principles established in earlier cases with similar facts and legal issues to decide the current case. However, if a judge thinks an earlier case was wrongly decided or if the facts of the new case differ in some important way from those of the earlier case, the judge may write a dissenting opinion or a concurrence, expressing an alternative view of how the case should be resolved.
A dissenting opinion is one in which the Justices disagree with the outcome or reasoning of the majority opinion in the case. The lead Justice in the case drafts the majority opinion, and other Justices can suggest edits to the document before it is voted on. Sometimes, a Justice who is not assigned to the case will write a concurring opinion. These opinions explain alternative grounds on which they reached the same outcome as the majority or plurality, but will not serve as binding precedent.