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United States courts of appeals may also make such decisions, particularly if the Supreme Court chooses not to review the case. Although many cases from state supreme courts are significant in developing the law of that state, only a few are so revolutionary that they announce standards that many other state courts then choose to follow.
An appellate court may also decide on an entirely new and different analysis from that of junior courts, and may or may not be bound by its own previous decisions, or in any case, may distinguish them on the facts. [5] [6] Where there are several members of a court deciding a case, there may be one or more judgments given (or reported).
The legal definition of "judgment" contemplates decisions made by judges in a court of law. [3] Decisions of quasi-judicial bodies and administrative bodies may also be colloquially referred to as "judgments," but they must be distinguished from true judgments in that they are not made by judges in courts of law. [3]
United States Reports, the official reporter of the Supreme Court of the United States. Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported.
A unanimous opinion is one in which all of the justices agree and offer one rationale for their decision. A majority opinion is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of a court. A majority opinion sets forth the decision of the court and an explanation of the rationale behind the court's decision.
Sometimes, with regard to a particular provision of a written constitution, only one court decision has been made. By necessity, until further rulings are made, this ruling is the leading case. For example, in Canada, "[t]he leading case on voting rights and electoral boundary readjustment is Carter.
Volumes of the United States Reports. The United States Reports (ISSN 0891-6845) are the official record (law reports) of the Supreme Court of the United States.They include rulings, orders, case tables (list of every case decided), in alphabetical order both by the name of the petitioner (the losing party in lower courts) and by the name of the respondent (the prevailing party below), and ...
Scots common law covers matters including murder and theft, and has sources in custom, in legal writings and previous court decisions. The legal writings used are called Institutional Texts and come mostly from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Examples include Craig, Jus Feudale (1655) and Stair, The Institutions of the Law of Scotland (1681).