What happens when the opinion of the Court misrepresents the facts of the case? In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the Court ruled 6–3 in favor of a high school football coach who had been leading players in prayer and was instructed by the school district to stop. [PDF] Justice Sotomayor's dissent disputes some of the characterizations in the majority opinion: To the degree the Court portrays petitioner Joseph Kennedy’s prayers as private and quiet, it misconstrues the facts. For purposes of this question, let's assume that the above statement is correct that the majority opinion is wrong. What are the effects of substantive factual errors in an opinion? Like, for example: I assume that this specific ruling is not affected in any way by the text of the opinion? (Like, I assume that even an opinion of the form &quot;We got high and decided to rule wrongly for fun&quot; wouldn't actually negate the ruling?) How does this affect the precedent? Will courts in the future consider the true facts of the case (whatever they perceive them to be), or will they accept as legal fiction that the facts were as the Court describes them? Could it be legal for the district to repeat exactly the same set of actions in exactly the same set of true circumstances as before, since those won't be the same circumstances that the Court claimed to rule on? In this instance, the Court seems to be reversing the lower court's ruling directly; but sometimes the Court remands a case to a lower court in order to decide it on a different basis than it had. In such a case, is the lower court bound by the Supreme Court's characterization of the facts of the case, or can it use the true facts of the case as long as it obeys the ruling itself?
What are the legal consequences of substantive factual errors in an opinion? None. I assume that this specific ruling is not affected in any way by the text of the opinion? Correct. I assume that even an opinion of the form &quot;We got high and decided to rule wrongly for fun&quot; wouldn't actually negate the ruling? Probably not, but it might precipitate a constitutional crisis or lead to an impeachment. How does this affect the precedent? It doesn't. Will courts in the future consider the true facts of the case (whatever they perceive them to be), No. will they accept as legal fiction that the facts were as the Court describes them? Yes. Could it be legal for the district to repeat exactly the same set of actions in exactly the same set of true circumstances as before, since those won't be the same circumstances that the Court claimed to rule on? In such a case, is the lower court bound by the Supreme Court's characterization of the facts of the case, Generally speaking the lower courts are bound by characterizations of the facts made by the appellate court. But, it depends to some extent on the procedural posture of the case. In most cases, the findings of fact made by the trial court following an evidentiary hearing are binding on appellate courts in the U.S. unless they are not supported by any admissible evidence presented at trial, but there are some exceptions to this rule and there is considerable art as well as science that goes into properly characterizing the evidence presented at trial. But, for example, many appellate cases are appeals from a dismissal of a case on a motion to dismiss at the outset of a case, in which all allegations of the Plaintiff's complaint in a civil matter are taken as true for sake of argument, and the legal issue presented is whether the Plaintiff can prevail if all of those facts are true. In a case in that procedural posture, assuming that the appellate court reversed the trial court and found that the facts alleged state a claim upon which relief can be granted, then the remand would be to move forward with discovery and other pre-trial procedures in the case and ultimately a trial, if necessary, to determine the actual facts of the case as opposed to the facts as alleged by the Plaintiff in the complaint or petition. Not infrequently, when appellate courts are divided over what happened in the trial court, one side of the debate, looking at the raw testimony and exhibits presented at trial, will conclude that the admissible evidence presented at trial did not support the findings of fact in a mixed question of fact and law made by a trial court judge, while another side of the debate will accept the trial court judge's findings of fact uncritically. It often isn't easy to know, from reading an appellate court opinion alone, which side is which in this regard. can it use the true facts of the case as long as it obeys the ruling itself? Usually not. Usually, facts relied upon by an appellate court are by definition the correct facts (apart from clerical errors - e.g., an appellate court once misspelled my name in a court opinion, and the lower court wasn't bound by that mistake). This said, as noted above, the precise procedural posture of the case, nature of the court's opinion, and scope of the remand order is highly relevant to what a court can do on remand.
It would be dismissed sua sponte on grounds including absolute judicial immunity from civil liability. While conflict of interest rules for judges generally prohibit ruling on lawsuits in which you could potentially have an interest, there are narrow exceptions in cases where all judges are affected. The Colorado Rule, which is similar in all U.S. jurisdictions, states: In limited circumstances, the rule of necessity applies and allows judges to hear a case in which all other judges also would have a disqualifying interest or the case could not otherwise be heard. Colo. Code. Jud. Cond. 2.11(D) (&quot;Disqualification&quot;).
The court's job is to resolve the dispute. The parties are in court specifically because there isn't agreement on what the terms of the contract were or even if there is a contract at all. If one of the parties contends that there is no contract then the court will have to determine if there is or isn't. Even if both parties agree there is a contract the court will need to satisfy itself that there is. This is a jurisdictional matter; in the absence of a contract the court can't make a ruling. Having decided there is a contract, there is something about the contract they don't agree on - if they agree then why are they in court? Each party will state their position on the dispute and provide evidence that supports that position. The court will decide based on the evidence and on the balance of probabilities which version is more correct. It is a given that the parties are in dispute about the exact terms of the contract, whether this was because of an initial misunderstanding, someone didn't read it or someone saw an opportunity to screw someone else doesn't matter. The court will decide what it thinks the parties thought (or should have thought) at the time on the basis of the evidence and the law.
Is truth the ultimate defense to a defamation lawsuit in the USA? Truth is an absolute defense to defamation lawsuits in modern U.S. law (this was not always the case historically) as a matter of constitutional law in every state. In some kinds of defamation lawsuits (but not all kinds of defamation lawsuits), "actual malice" which means knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth, must be shown, so even a negligently stated falsehood is not actionable in those special kinds of defamation cases (mostly cases with public figure plaintiffs, media defendants, and/or case involving matters of public concern). Does a defamation defense vary between states? While most aspects of defamation law are mandated by the U.S. Constitution and a shared common law tradition, there are some slight and subtle differences between the states in defamation law, mostly concerning defamation suits by non-public figures against non-media defendants concerning matters that are not a matter of public concern. This impacts whether "actual malice" must be shown and can influence the burden of proof in defamation cases. Statutes of limitation for defamation suits also vary significantly between states. Even if the release of truthful information results in permanent career damage (i.e. loss of job, reputation, etc.) to someone, the truth would protect the author from a defamation lawsuit, correct? Yes. Keep in mind, however, that a defamation lawsuit is a suit for damage to one's reputation caused by a false statement. Sometimes disclosures of truthful information constitute an actionable tort other than defamation, however. For example, there would potentially be a civil action against someone who had signed a non-disclosure agreement for revealing truthfully information that the person sued contractually agreed not to disclose (e.g. the terms of the settlement agreement in a court case with a non-disclosure/confidentiality term, or the recipe for a restaurant's secret sauce that is a trade secret). Similarly, a doctor who revealed confidential patient medical information that was true could be sued. But, usually, in the absence of a particularlized confidentiality duty, truth is an absolute defense.
Some simplified points of basic defamation law as background: A critical element of defamation law is that the defendant said something false. You therefore can't win a defamation case if it's based on a statement that can't be proven false: &quot;You are annoying.&quot; &quot;You are ugly.&quot; &quot;You are a bad lawyer.&quot; If a statement can't be proven false, it is considered opinion. Statments of opinion are virtually always protected by the First Amendment. Powell's brief relies on this framework to argue that because her statements were statements of opinion, no defamation could have occurred. It's like defending against a murder charge by saying that no one died. Although it isn't generally referred to as the &quot;reasonable person standard,&quot; reasonableness comes into this question because part of the calculus in assessing whether a statement is fact or opinion is to ask whether a reasonable person would understand the statement to be making an assertion of fact. Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990). By leaning into that language, Powell is not saying that reasonable people would not have any reaction or would not have any specific reaction to her statements; instead, she is saying that reasonable people would not have understood her statements to be assertions of fact. Her argument seems to turn on the fact that she was speaking as an attorney representing a political candidate in a lawsuit, and that reasonable people understand statements made in that context to be &quot;inherently prone to exaggeration and hyperbole” and &quot;view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process.&quot; For what it's worth, that seems to me like a pretty weak argument. While people expect a certain amount of puffery from their candidates, they also expect that lawyers representing the President of the United States aren't going into court with frivolous allegations. More importantly, though, I think she's running the analysis incorrectly. Rather than asking whether a reasonable person would understand her statements to assertions of fact, she's asking whether a reasonable person would think that she was prone to exaggerate in the setting in which she made those statements. As I understand it, a speaker cannot cloak statements of fact from liability by merely refraining from uttering them until she finds herself in a context where people expect some amount of loose speech. Even if you're a partisan hack with no credibility appearing on a TV show hosted by another partisan hack with no credibility, you generally can't accuse your opponent of being a murderer or child molester or something like that. Those are still assertions of fact, even if they're bookended with statements that &quot;Donald Trump is the greatest president this country will ever have.&quot; The brief does not rely at all on Hustler or the First Amendment protections for parody that were discussed in the previous answer. These tests are closely related, however, as both defenses claim that the speech was not &quot;false&quot; in the relevant sense.
Unless you are an ambassador or one of the US states, SCOTUS doesn't have original jurisdiction over your lawsuit, so they can't hear it either. If you've named all the judges of all the courts that do have jurisdiction, then one of them will handle it anyway, under the doctrine of necessity noted before. For cases that do fall within the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, a jury trial is theoretically possible, but it appears it has not occurred since the 1790s, and only one has surviving records: Georgia v. Brailsford in 1794. See &quot;Special Juries in the Supreme Court&quot; by Lochlan F. Shelfer, Yale Law Journal 123:1, 2013-2014. Otherwise, non-jury original jurisdiction cases are usually delegated to a special master, a sort of &quot;contract judge&quot; who hears all the evidence and recommends a judgment that the full court typically rubber-stamps.
I assume you are asking about horizontal stare decisis: a court following its own previous holdings or those of courts of coordinate jurisdiction (e.g. courts at the same &quot;level&quot; in the judiciary). I say this because your incredulity does not seem to extend to the notion that appellate courts can bind lower courts. You ask: why are prior judges’ powers of interpretations automatically seen to be more capable and robust than, so as to bind and prevail over, subsequent judges’ interpretative abilities? This is not the rationale for horizontal stare decisis. The doctrine is not at all based on the premise that the first court or judge to answer got it correct. Justification was given in a concurring opinion in R. v. Kirkpatrick, 2022 SCC 33: Stare decisis promotes: (1) legal certainty and stability, allowing people to plan and manage their affairs; (2) the rule of law, such that people are subject to similar rules; and (3) the legitimate and efficient exercise of judicial authority (citations omitted). And horizontal stare decisis is not absolute. Common-law jurisdictions have developed limited avenues for departure. For example, in Canada, a lower court can depart from previous decisions of courts of coordinate jurisdiction when (R. v. Sullivan, 2022 SCC 19): The rationale of an earlier decision has been undermined by subsequent appellate decisions; The earlier decision was reached per incuriam (“through carelessness” or “by inadvertence”); or The earlier decision was not fully considered, e.g. taken in exigent circumstances. Even apex courts have developed a sense of internal obligation to follow their own precedents. But departure from previous decisions may be justified where (see the Kirkpatrick concurrence at para. 202): The Court rendering the decision failed to have regard to a binding authority or relevant statute (“per incuriam”); The decision has proven unworkable (“unworkability”); or The decision’s rationale has been eroded by significant societal or legal change (“foundational erosion”). This has been viewed to &quot;strike the appropriate balance between the competing demands of certainty, correctness and the even-handed development of the law&quot; (R. v. Sullivan, 2022 SCC 19). &quot;Adherence to precedent furthers basic rule of law values such as consistency, certainty, fairness, predictability, and sound judicial administration.&quot;
The general rule is that in the opening statement, the lawyer may describe what he expects the evidence and testimony to show: We will present Mr Smith, who will tell you that he saw the defendant miles away at the time of the crime But cannot make statements of fact as such. I don't see why this rule would be different for a pro se defendant. In a closing argument, as i understand the rule, the lawyer may and often will say things like "As witness X testified, there was no time to stop" but is not supposed to introduce new alleged facts not supported by the evidence. However, in a closing, a lawyer can and often does draw conclusions from facts supported by testimony. "My client was proved to have been in the next town 20 minutes earleri, so obviously he could not have committed the crime." Again, i don't see any reason why these rules would be different for someone acting pro se.