So how long do you think it took Judge Posner to (speed-)read all the merits opinions through May 20? A “short period.”

I hadn’t actually read many Supreme Court decisions this term as they came down, so in preparation for this stint of commenting for Slate I sat down and read, in a short period, all the cases decided through May 20. Maybe “read” is too strong a word for what I did because I didn’t read every word in all or even most of the opinions. But I read enough to form two impressions. The first is that they are on average quite well written in the sense that each sentence is clear, though the opinion as a whole may not be. Second, they are inordinately long.