Earlier in the year, Ryan Gabrielson was in a hotel room in Wisconsin, reading the news. He’s a reporter covering the courts for ProPublica, and one story stuck out.

"I was actually stuck in a hotel room half snowed in earlier this year and reading a bunch of news stories, and one of them popped up from The New York Times about a 2002-2003 case Justice Kennedy wrote about sex offenders," Gabrielson said in an interview with The Takeaway. " And in it, he said sex offenders who don't get treatment have a startlingly high rate of recidivism, upwards of 80 percent." 

That stat turned out to be false. Justice Kennedy referenced the stat, which was from a Psychology Today article written by someone who actually didn’t have any research to support the number, but just figured it to be true. In other words, the Supreme Court delivered an opinion, setting legal precedent for years to come, using made up facts.

And that made Ryan wonder: "Has this ever happened before? Do they not vet what they put in their majority opinions?" 

It sent him down a rabbit hole, and The Takeaway spoke with Ryan about the errors being made by the highest court in the land. In a review of 83 cases between 2011-2015, Gabrielson found seven errors that in some cases helped determine the outcome of the case. 

This segment is hosted by Todd Zwillich.