Supreme Court Notes of Revisions to Slip Opinions (7/15/20)

Readers of Supreme Court Slip Opinions have undoubtedly noticed the following caveat at the beginning of the majority or plurality opinions:

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.  C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.

So, I suppose that if you are working from the Slip Opinion that you downloaded or perhaps cut and pasted in whole or in part (as I often do), it would behoove you to check for revisions.  I assume that the various standard services (WestLaw, Lexis-Nexis, etc.) routinely update their versions of the opinions for that, so users of those services can be reasonably assured that they are working from opinions with the revisions.  (I don't know whether those services alert readers that the text has been revised and, if so, what text was revised.)  But those working from the Slip Opinion (unless viewed on the web site that) should check for the revisions.

I just learned today that there is a way to determine whether the original Slip Opinion has been revised.  The Court publishes notice that opinions have been revised.  You have to look in a particular place, because my docket search for one case for which the Slip Opinion had been revised did not show that the opinion had been revised.  See e.g., the docket for Seila Law LLC v. CPFB, ___ U.S. ___, ___ S.Ct. ___ (2020).  The opinion is here and the docket is here.  Neither indicate that the opinion has been revised.

The Court's notice of revision appears in a reverse chronological list of opinions by term, that links to the opinion and shows, with links, the date(s) of revisions, if any. The list is here.  For the Seila Law opinion originally rendered in June 2020, noted above, the list shows as of today a revision on 7/8/20 and the linked document showing the revisions is here.  My quick review of the decided cases for the 2019 term did not indicate any revisions in tax cases.

I suppose there might be other places on the Court's website where changes are noted, but I don't know of them.  The safer bet would be to review the list linked above.

My thanks to an article in the Supreme Court Brief email today by Tony Mauro from Law.com under the title “Revisions in Decisions.”  The article notes that the Supreme Court began publishing notes of revisions in 2015 in response to a law review article critiquing the practice of otherwise secret revisions.  Prior to the new practice, when the Slip Opinion was revised, the Slip Opinion was changed on the Court’s site but no notice of where the revision was made was given.  Since 2015, the Court has given notice as indicated above.  The article notes:

Some of the revisions are minor but amusing, as in 2018 when Justice Stephen Breyer, a French-speaking francophile, misspelled “laissez faire” as “lassez faire.” But other revisions have some significance. Here are the changes made in June 2020 decisions: 

>> In Seila v. CPFB, Justice Clarence Thomas made reference to the 1988 Morrison v. Olson decision and “all nine members” who participated in the case. The revision clarified that Morrison was ruled on by eight justices, with Justice Anthony Kennedy recused. 

>> In Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a concurrence, wrote that the “people of Puerto Rico approved the modified Constitution” of Puerto Rico in 1952. The revision stated that, in fact, Puerto Rico’s “constitutional convention approved the modified Constitution.” 

>> Three days later, a second change in Sotomayor’s concurrence established that after the convention was approved, “the people of Puerto Rico subsequently ratified modifications in another referendum.”  

So far, no revisions have been made in the 10 decisions issued by the court in the spillover period of July.