A court decision is the written ruling made by a judge in a particular case. It can settle both the factual and legal issues in the dispute. Judges use constitutional, statutory, and past decisions (called “precedent”) to resolve disputes and create law.
The Court hears about 7,000 cases each year. The majority of the cases it decides are appeals from federal courts of appeals, or from state high courts on matters of constitutional law. The other cases the Court decides are usually called petitions for writs of certiorari, or “cert appeals.”
Most of the time the Court hands down a single opinion on a case. This is known as a majority opinion, and it will state the outcome of the case and how the Court reached that result. The lead justice in the case will write this document, and then it is circulated to the other Justices who will vote on it. Occasionally, Justices may write a concurrence or dissenting opinion to the majority or plurality opinion in which they express their alternative reasons for agreeing with the outcome of the case.
The Court will hand down all of its opinions by the end of its term — the day in late June/early July when the Supreme Court recesses for the summer. Some of these opinions are written in a way that does not identify the authors; they are known as per curiam opinions. Others, such as the famous Bush v. Gore decision on the 2000 election, are identified by one or more Justices who wrote them.