Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 58.0

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

11 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

due a past decision, a judge is not to be guided by his own 
impression alone, but must self-consciously test his views
against those who have come before, open to the possibility 
that a precedent might be correct in ways not initially ap-
parent to him. 

Third, it would be a mistake to read judicial opinions like 
statutes.  Adopted through a robust and democratic process,
statutes often apply in all their particulars to all persons.
By contrast, when judges reach a decision in our adversar-
ial system, they render a judgment based only on the fac-
tual record and legal arguments the parties at hand have 
chosen to develop.  A later court assessing a past decision 
must  therefore  appreciate  the  possibility  that  different 
facts and different legal arguments may dictate a different 
outcome.  They must appreciate, too, that, like anyone else, 
judges  are  “innately  digressive,”  and  their  opinions  may 
sometimes offer stray asides about a wider topic that may
sound nearly like legislative commands.  Duxbury 4.  Often, 
enterprising  counsel  seek  to  exploit  such  statements  to 
maximum effect.  See id., at 25.  But while these digressions
may sometimes contain valuable counsel, they remain “va-
pours and fumes of law,” Bacon 478, and cannot “control the
judgment in a subsequent suit,” Cohens, 6 Wheat., at 399. 
These  principles,  too,  have  long  guided  this  Court  and 
others.  As Judge Easterbrook has put it, an “opinion is not 
a  comprehensive  code;  it  is  just  an  explanation  for  the 
Court’s disposition.  Judicial opinions must not be confused 
with statutes, and general expressions must be read in light
of  the  subject  under  consideration.”  United  States  v. 
Skoien,  614  F. 3d  638, 640  (CA7  2010)  (en  banc);  see  also 
Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U. S. 330, 341 (1979) (stress-
ing  that  an  opinion  is  not  “a  statute,”  and  its  language 
should not “be parsed” as if it were); Nevada v. Hicks, 533 
U. S.  353,  372  (2001)  (same).    If  stare  decisis  counsels  re-
spect for the thinking of those who have come before, it also 
counsels against doing an “injustice to [their] memory” by