EvilCat Breath
Diamond Member
- Sep 23, 2016
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When a case comes before the Supreme Court the basis of the case comes up for discussion among the justices. They decide whether to accept it or reject the case. Once a case has been accepted the Chief Justice assigns it to an associate justice to write an opinion. The draft opinion is circulated among the justices and gets returned with comments from justices and their clerks. The draft opinion gets rewritten. It might go through this process several times. Every justice may write either a concurring or dissenting opinion. Sometimes dissenting opinions get cited more than the majority opinion. I don't understand where you think a vote comes in.I don't know a lot about the internal workings of the Supreme Court - I doubt anyone who doesn't actually work there does - but I don't think Alito would have written up the draft opinion unless there was a reasonable idea of how the vote was going to go.
From what I can understand from people who are lawyers (as I am not), the draft was written to circulate to the other Justices to allow them to see what he had in mind, discuss and debate it, and possibly even change their votes before the whole thing becomes official. For him to be writing it at all, they had to have taken a vote with him in the majority. However, the votes remain fluid until the decision is officially handed down, and the majority opinion can go through multiple drafts.