The justices, just like us here at SCOTUSblog, are unfortunately not immune to making errors in their writing – despite the many rounds of edits by clerks and other justices. In fact, opinion revisions have been a part of the court’s proceedings since its earliest days.
Over the last few decades, justices have also revised their opinions, sometimes in significant, substantive ways after their release. In Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor deleted a full sentence characterizing Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent, and in Environmental Protection Agency v. EME Homer City Generation, Scalia made a “high-profile mistake and correction,” rewriting a passage in his dissent that had mischaracterized the EPA’s argument in a 2001 Supreme Court ruling (a decision he had authored, no less). In 2008, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito voted to rehear a case in which Justice Anthony Kennedy had made his own “high-profile correction” to the court’s decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana, which banned the death penalty in the case of child rape. Kennedy’s decision had incorrectly stated the existing federal law around the death penalty for child rape; he wrote that in 30 states and under federal law the death penalty was barred for the non-fatal rape of a child, but he neglected to mention a federal law passed two years earlier that permitted the death penalty in military justice cases for that offense.
Corrections like these are supervised by the Reporter of Decisions, whose office has managed the revision process “at least since the early twentieth century.” Each slip opinion contains a notice asking readers to report “typographical or other formal errors” to the Reporter, whose office also reviews opinions. (Former Reporter Frank Wagner once said readers contact the office 10-20 times per year, although few of them actually warrant changes.) The Reporter compiles all suggested changes and sends them to the authoring justice, who then accepts or rejects each suggestion. Since 1994, substantive changes have reportedly required approval by the full court. Approved corrections are then added to the opinion as it moves from slip form, to preliminary print, to the bound U.S. Reports, which the court says alone contains the “final, official” text. In 2015, the court began annotating slip opinions to show where there had been changes. The change came after Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus’ 2014 law review article, “The (Non) Finality of Supreme Court Opinions” brought widespread awareness to the revisions.
So what has been corrected in the current term’s opinions?
As of July 14, revisions have been made in nine cases. One replacement was made in the 194-page Trump v. Barbara, which struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. On page 28 of Thomas’ 91-page dissent, a quote initially attributed to “Senator Reverdy Williams” was changed to “Senator George Williams.” Supreme Court watchers caught the mistake the day the opinion was issued: National Review Online writer Dan McLaughlin posted on X that “Thomas & Alito both cite a Senator ‘Reverdy Williams’ in their dissents, but pretty sure they mean Reverdy Johnson (D-MD), who was a vigorous participant in the Senate debates.”
As for other revisions, most of these have been minor grammatical fixes or spelling changes (for instance, in Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, one word was changed – from “have plaintiffs show any way” to “have plaintiffs shown any way” – and in Abouammo v. United States “means rea” was changed to “mens rea.”)
And as SCOTUSblog editor Sarah Isgur noted the day Hunter v. United States was released, the wrong version of “forgo” appeared on the first page of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurrence. “Today, the Court begins to correct course,” Gorsuch wrote. “It rules that prosecutors may not always leverage their plea-bargaining power to induce a defendant to forego the right to contest his sentence on appeal.” Sarah: “Fun fact: Forego means to go before. Forgo means to waive. Therefore, I predict this little typo is going to be revised for the foregoing reason.” And so it was. In Trump v. Slaughter, one word and a comma was changed on page eight of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent – from “If, it was true” to “If it were true.”
Other edits have been (slightly) more substantive. In Louisiana v. Callais, the opinion text was changed from “Argued October 15, 2025—Decided” to “Argued March 24, 2025—Reargued October 15, 2025—Decided April 29, 2026,” and in United States v. Hemani, “Tylenol with codeine” was changed to “Robitussin with codeine.”