Judicial opinion

A judicial opinion is a form of legal opinion written by a judge or a judicial panel in the course of resolving a legal dispute, providing the decision reached to resolve the dispute, and usually indicating the facts which led to the dispute and an analysis of the law used to arrive at the decision. An opinion may be released in several stages of completeness. First, a bench opinion may be handed down, with the judge or panel of judges indicating their decision and a rough explanation of the reasoning underlying it. A slip opinion may also be issued the day the decision is handed down, and is usually not typeset or fully formatted. It is not the final or most authoritative version, being subject to further revision before being replaced with a final published edition. The Supreme Court of the United States issues slip opinions with the following disclaimer: The "slip" opinion is the second version of an opinion. It is sent to the printer later in the day on which the "bench" opinion is released by the Court. Each slip opinion has the same elements as the bench opinion—majority or plurality opinion, concurrences or dissents, and a prefatory syllabus—but may contain corrections not appearing in the bench opinion. Caution: These electronic opinions may contain computer-generated errors or other deviations from the official printed slip opinion pamphlets. Moreover, a slip opinion is replaced within a few months by a paginated version of the case in the preliminary print, and—one year after the issuance of that print—by the final version of the case in a U. S. Reports bound volume. In case of discrepancies between the print and electronic versions of a slip opinion, the print version controls. In case of discrepancies between the slip opinion and any later official version of the opinion, the later version controls. 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.