A court decision is a judicial determination of parties’ rights and obligations reached by a judge based on facts and law. A decision can also mean the act of delivering a ruling on a case or the text of the ruling itself. Court decisions are often prefaced by a syllabus and may include the majority or principal opinion of the Justice who wrote it, plus any concurring or dissenting opinions.
Judicial decisions are a critical part of the legal system, and there is considerable interest in the role they play. One important factor is the importance of a judicial decision, which may be measured by the extent to which it establishes a precedent or influences future cases. Judges, however, often use the term importance in different ways. They may speak of the value of a judgment in terms of its importance, normative importance or authority; they also frequently cite past decisions as if they had some kind of inherent importance.
In almost all cases, the Supreme Court decides whether to affirm, modify or reverse a lower-court decision by reviewing the legal arguments presented by the attorneys for the appellant (the party making an appeal) and the appellee (the party responding to the appeal). The Justices study the record of the case and question the parties’ attorneys during oral argument. If the justices cannot agree on how to resolve the case, they write a plurality opinion.
Previous research on judicial decision-making has focused on the relationship between judges, public opinion and the media. Our research investigated how judges interact with the media by interviewing them about their consumption of media and their approach to possible use of the media to communicate a decision. We found that judges who want their decision to resonate with the public are willing to invest effort in communicating it through the media.