June 01, 2017
Dissenting
An inside look at the art of explaining why the winners of a judicial determination are wrong.
Hon. Paul E. Pfeifer with Robert L. Burpee
Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
—Albert Einstein
Dissenting is an essential part of being a justice. Even the most mundane, go-along-to-get-along justice is going to disagree with fellow justices from time to time. Over the course of 24 years, I (Justice Pfeifer) was fortunate to have precious few mundane judicial colleagues, but I did encounter many who were wrong and I did have occasion to try to correct them. In essence, a dissent is an attempt by someone on the losing side of a judicial determination to convince the other side that it is wrong.
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