Why Bother With a Dissent in a Court of Last Appeal?
So, why a dissent in a decision by the court of last appeal? Sometimes the dissent is aimed squarely at the legislative branch, in hopes it will change the law at issue. That is exactly what the dissenting justices did in Delgado v. State, 776 So. 2d 233, 242 (Fla. 2000), when they explicitly urged the Florida Legislature “to immediately review and plainly express whether it accepts the majority’s construction of this statute.” Accepting that invitation, the legislature enacted F.S. §810.015 (2001), to nullify the court’s decision in Delgado. Sometimes the dissent is aimed at a future court. Chief Justice Hughes described it as “an appeal . . . to the intelligence of a future day, when a later decision may possibly correct the error into which the dissenting judge believes the court to have been betrayed.”33 Justice Scalia observed that “[w]hen history demonstrates that one of the Court’s decisions has been a truly horrendous mistake, it is comforting . . . to look back and realize tha
