Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, “My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.” But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020) American lawyer and jurist, Supreme Court Justice (1993–2020)

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Malvina Harlan,” interview by Nina Totenberg, NPR (2002-05-02)
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Speaking of Justice John Marshall Harlan and his lone dissent in Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), where the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Ginsburg was being interviewed for her role in getting a long-lost memoir by Malvina Harlan, the Justice's wife, published as a book.