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?Justices are long on words but short on guidance?

By Alliance Alert

Adam Liptak writing in the New York Times: "The Supreme Court under the leadership of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is often criticized for issuing sweeping and politically polarized decisions. But there is an emerging parallel critique as well, this one concerned with the quality of the court?s judicial craftsmanship. In decisions on questions great and small, the court often provides only limited or ambiguous guidance to lower courts." Orin Kerr responds at The Volokh Conspiracy: "No matter what Supreme Court opinions look like, there will always be someone who criticizes them for not being clear enough . . . In my experience, judges and lawyers in the lower courts know exactly what to do with concurrences in Supreme Court opinions that don?t provide the crucial vote. For the most part they just ignore them, unless the concurrences happen to have some language that the lawyer or judge needs to support the argument they?re making anyway."

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on November 19, 2010 (boomark / email).