The article does not imho agree with the title. By it's own admittance, the "final word" is indeed final:

> There are two exceptions to the general practice of quietly slipping changes into opinions. One happens only after the decisions are published in final form

Maybe the bigger problem is that people are relying "prerelase" documents to be authoritative, when they actually aren't.

If the final word doesn't come out until 5 years after the decision is announced, what are they supposed to do in the interim? Especially considering that these opinions are used in colleges teaching law and are referenced in textbooks. They can't just pretend the opinion didn't happen for 5 years.

"Especially considering that these opinions are used in colleges teaching law and are referenced in textbooks."

Somewhat similar to what happens in medicine though or other disciplines. You learn something in school which isn't always the final say on the subject matter.

Law is something that requires you to be constantly up to date.

It'd be easier to keep up to date if changes were flagged instead of a secret process that requires you to manually compare printed books with pdfs.

I think they were being specific as in "the final wording".

This seems like a disgrace. Someone should teach them Git.

I don't know why you were downvoted. Version control would be hugely useful for all lawmakers -- those in parliament/senates too.

The UK Parliament actually has a slightly crazy system of using different coloured marker pens to indicate different revisions at different stages (1st reading, 2nd reading, Commons, Lords etc.). They need version control.

I'm friends with a former state senator, and suggested this to her. She laughed at me and said that's the last thing lawmakers want. They like being able to sneak little bits into bills when no one's looking. She used to start reading bills in the back, because that's where the graft would get thrown in, usually written in some really obscure manner.

So to get this to happen I think we would first need some kind of version control so easy and compelling that the general public starts using it everywhere, and then maybe we can build enough public pressure to make the legislators use it.

(On the other hand I don't see any reason why judges would be against it for court decisions.)

Making law is programming. The CPU is a bit fuzzy, but that's about the only difference. We should absolutely make lawmakers use and learn real version control.

This is how they do "cut up" which is producing a document with its amendments/changes - the other old school way is to cut and paste (using scissors and glue) any amendments next to the paragraphs amended - effectively each person maintains there own version of the document they are debating.

More modern systems just produce omnibus documents at the start of the day/session which have the amendments and consequentials in one place.

Your right parliamentary systems could use a decent electronic system to replace a lot of the paper that is produced - but this would require extra staff working very anti social hours to process everything and put it on the system.

"I don't know why you were downvoted."

Probably because a) it seemed like a joke statement b) didn't go into any detail on how git would solve this particular problem.

Plus, git would still allow them to rewrite history. Mercurial or perforce would be a better option for solving this problem.

There used to be a healthy business of "loose leaf" publishing, keeping the interested parties up to date on government regulations: page 77.b would go into the binder after pages 77 and 77.a, and 77.b.i would go in behind that. Now, whether these publishers got the updates from the government, or had to dig them out by close reading, I don't remember, or maybe just never knew.

The legal equivalent is a redline (or blackline).

So.... its hard to be a lawyer.

The Supreme Court has always reversed earlier rulings and changed its opinion with the times. In 1928 (Olmstead v. United States), the Supreme Court ruled that wiretaps did NOT violate the 4th and 5th Amendment. (The argument was that you didn't own the telephone lines, so there was no expectation of privacy). This was more or less confirmed in Goldman v. United States (1942).

It wasn't until 1967 (Katz v. United States) that Wiretaps were declared "search" that required a warrant.

None of these changes were due to Congressional Action. They were all due to Supreme Court cases. And this is why Lawyers are paid a lot of bucks... because its their job to keep up with not only Congressional law, but with Supreme Court rulings (interpretations of law), which can change on the whims of the Supreme Court Justices.

I've always seen the Supreme Court as a farce. The very fact that laws are decided upon without consensus is troubling to think about. If these justices are the most authoritative judges of constitutional matters and disagree with each other on fundamental rulings shows the subjectivity and flaws of the legal system.

The law is not a democracy, and a 5-4 ruling is the greatest absurdity of this system. Presumably, if another political party was in power for an appointment, the decision may be the exact opposite. If the constitution is so treasured as a framework constraining the powers of the state and guarding the rights of citizens, why is consensus not the only standard for which decisions are made on constitutional matters?

    If the constitution is so treasured as a framework constraining the powers of the state and guarding the rights of citizens, why is consensus not the only standard for which decisions are made on constitutional matters?

The Supreme Court gains its powers from the Constitution. Its like you've never even read the Constitution. Article III. If you don't like the Supreme Court, then you don't like the Constitution. Period.

No offense, but your words sound hugely ignorant of the meaning of the word "Constitution", or the theory of law under which it works.

True, but this article isn't about the Court's ability to reverse or distinguish prior opinions with new ones. It's about their practice of quietly sneaking substantive edits into opinions months or years after initial decisions were handed down.

We should be demanding that modern revision control tools are put in place everywhere they're appropriate. This case is a poster child for it, but even more so it should be standard in the legislative process to have commit authors and changelogs. Every citizen should have ridiculously easy access to the current laws and regulations they are bound by, along with who wrote those laws and who lobbied/campaign funded them to write those laws. This is especially true given the fact that ignorance of the law is not an acceptable excuse for breaking it.

Is it really that difficult to get plain text versions and diff them?

The article suggests that the final versions are only available in hardback printed form.

The bound volumes are the authoritative reference in case of discrepancies between the digital and bound versions, but digital versions are available in PDF form: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/boundvolumes.aspx.

The article says that in several instances the older, I corrected version of decisions are on the Web site, so I presume that these are the files that are the problematic ones.

Doesn't the article say that the final version is available in Lexis? Is it possible for someone write a crawler in a grad school library that gets all supreme court opinions of the last five years, diffs them, and checks in diffs to a git repo?

Isn't that what the Times did with its interactive feature that accompanies this article?

Well, now I'm curious. I hope some attentive lawyers are working on a "revision log".