[walshemj]

Isn't a like a judge making an initial ruling and then the next week saying oops that death penalty thingy I have changed my mind?

And if you are making revision you need to publish the actual changes not just slip out a new version ie para A3 delete last sentence and replace with "foo bar".

Dont they cover that at "judging school" to quote the E L wisty aka the late Peter Cook

[PeterisP]

1. The rulings of the case don't change, the explanatory comments and reasoning gets further edited after the ruling - any changes there would affect decisions in future cases, but not for this one.

2. After they're finally published in U.S. Reports, any changes are published as proper errata. However, the 'post on the website' is of a draft that's after the ruling but much, much before publication.

All this article is about tracking the changes that get made before the U.S. reports version is published, and the 'slip' version is essentially described as "this is a pre-release draft, read if you want but the following publications may be different and that will be binding, not this one". If you read a draft of a novel, do you expect the released version to include an errata of things that were changed from that draft?

[walshemj]

I would expect the highest judicial court in the land to ONLY publish final documents any drafts should be between the justices and the clerks. Why do I say this to stop the risk of media jumping to conclusions and getting the wrong end of the stick and thus making the supreme court look like amateurs.

Certainly when I have been involved in formal parliamentary style work we would never publish a draft.