[ajkessler]

One of the most famous is US v. Carolene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Carolene_Produ...), but there are hundreds, maybe thousands of examples. Even when they don't contain actual law, footnotes often give insights into why a court decided an issue or interpreted a fact the way it did. These little hints can be invaluable in distinguishing later cases, or giving a later court a foothold to create some new law.

[IgorPartola]

Minor correction: courts do not create laws. They merely interpret them, setting a precedent.

[cwp]

Setting a precedent is, in fact, the creation of new law. This is the basis of the Common Law system that the United States and other former English colonies use. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

[IgorPartola]

:). Thanks for the link, it was very educational. However, it actually doesn't seem to apply in this case: "United States federal courts only act as interpreters of statutes and the constitution by elaborating and precisely defining the broad language (connotation 1(b) above), but, unlike state courts, do not act as an independent source of common law (connotation 1(a) above)." [1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#United_States_federa...

[ajkessler]

In theory, you're right: courts don't make laws. In practice, courts make law every day. This is intuitively obvious (e.g. If law says you can't do A or C but says nothing about B, and the court says "B is really just like A and C, so B is also prohibited under the law", the court has just made law)[edit: perhaps not so obvious if you don't practice law, but courts do this every day], but also goes deeper: The very idea of judicial review itself was invented by the courts (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison).

[IgorPartola]

Neat. I wonder what our society would have looked like today if Marshall lost that one (had a bad day, spilled his coffee).