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Comment by tekla | Hacker News Reader

> That opinions pdf on supremecourt.gov is 237 pages long. I need to read multiple news articles and then a novel just to have an opinion on something now? That's cool, I just won't then.

It's incredibly hard to have a conversation on a complex legal document if you do not read the legal document.

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Lawmakers don't even read the bills the vote on, they have legal experts explain the implications to them. Would you have a better understanding of a system if you skimmed the source code or if you watched a presentation from the author?

237 pages of legalese is way beyond what most people can handle, this is why lawyers exist. If you're saying people shouldn't have an opinion unless they read complex legal documents you're just saying you don't think people should have opinions.

My favorite is when the same lawmaker who voted on a 300 page bill that they needed to pass RIGHT NOW will complain that they didn't have enough time to review a 10 page bill after a change of majority party.

It's not at all legalese. Part of the reason the whole publication is so long is that each of the justices was fully aware that it'd be read by law students, interested citizens, etc. for decades to come and wrote out in longhand what legal scholars could just assume as background knowledge.

Each section was written to persuade the reader that the author's position is correct, and nobody gets appointed to the US Supreme Court without being really damn good at putting together a clear persuasive essay. These are extremely smart people with a small staff of very smart editors trying to convince you their position is the only right one; it's not like an insurance contract or EULA designed to "baffle 'em with bullshit".

If you've got a few hours to spare and even a modest level of background knowledge about American history and the current controversy involving racial quotas it's very readable. If it leaves you more ambivalent than before you started it's probably because they're arguing over a genuine public controversy where intelligent people operating in good faith can come to very different conclusions.

I did some decision reading in college for my GEs. They were all incredibly dry, difficult to get through, and I don't remember a single thing about any of them.

Depending on how old your kids are you might have an hour per day of free time. At an average of 40 pages per hour, this could take 6 days. Or I can find a legally versed content creator on youtube that will explain this to me and be done with it on the bus.

This is a topic that everyone has already moved on about. The fact that it's totally doable to spend 6 days on it does not make it a good idea to do. I would go as far as to say that for such a niche topic, for the vast majority of people this is a bad idea to do, and they shouldn't do it.

It really depends on the decision! For example, the mass of pages the Supreme Court has spent on ERISA could possibly count as a method of state-sponsored torture.

I totally understand being over the whole deal, but if you actually care about the issue the PDF itself is more coherent and readable than almost all the pre- and post- decision commentary which is mostly predictable, information-free nonsense.

You're absolutely right. However, we're not lawyers discussing law. We're random people that play video games discussing personal opinions in an informal setting. The point is we're getting hose fed "news stories" and I'm one mere person with a wife who I give much of my attention to, a job that I probably work more than my 40 hour share of a week at, hobbies that take more of my time, etc. Do you think it's reasonable to expect everyone with an opinion to have read a 237 page opinion piece on supremecourt.gov? Much more likely we're reading some editor's cut to speed along the process of absorbing enough information to be dangerous. I think it's fair to point out I might be missing some nuance of a judge's opinion because I didn't read their individual 45 page opinion, but in about 10 minutes I'm going to be reading a news story about China launching a real Death Star into orbit, and I need to get my brain ready to consume knowledge on that one, and then in about 25 minutes I'll be reading about covid-23.

"It's incredibly hard to have a conversation on a complex legal document if you do not read the legal document."

On HN, not only is it easy, it's standard operating procedure...

/s, but not really...

"nuance" and "exactness" may be decreased, but the ideas remain true

People on HN have conversations about things they didn't read every day.

If the topic is the correct interpetation of the constitution someone who has only read the most recent Supreme Court court opinion isn't particularly well read or knowledgable on the subject either, you need to read what the Supreme Court has historically said about the constitution, not just what the most recent group of judges is saying.

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