Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett are each telling the public to read the Supreme Court‘s opinions on major cases for themselves, rather than rely on media coverage of the high court’s decisions.

The plea from the justices comes as both women are speaking publicly to promote books published on Tuesday. Each has authored sharp opinions in hotly contested cases in recent months. Sotomayor, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by former President Barack Obama in 2009, wrote a firm dissent to the high court’s Monday order lifting a district court’s restrictions on immigration raids in the Los Angeles area, accusing the majority’s ruling of being “unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees.”

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When asked about the decision on CBS Mornings on Tuesday, Sotomayor deferred to her written opinion and encouraged citizens to read the court’s opinions rather than relying on headlines about decisions.

“I often ask people when they react to an opinion, they do so on the basis of newspaper reports, and I encourage them to educate themselves and read the actual decisions. Don’t take snippets, but try to understand what the logic of each side is,” Sotomayor said.

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Sotomayor also said she attempts to be “as clear as possible” when explaining her decisions in her written opinions.

“I try to be as clear as possible to explain to people, as I think I did in the opinion, the reasons why I believe it’s unconstitutional, and many of my reasons are based solely on the precedents that have established what reasonable cause for police to stop individuals are,” she said.

Barrett wrote a sharp opinion for the 6-3 majority in Trump v. CASA in June, which significantly limited district courts’ ability to issue universal injunctions, succinctly taking aim at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent. In her book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, released Tuesday, Barrett also mentioned the importance of citizens reading the high court’s opinions in notable cases.

In the book, the justice appointed to the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump in 2020, mentioned an anecdote about when her brother-in-law took her up on her plea for people to read the court’s opinions, coming to a family vacation with a copy of the court’s 2022 opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ready to discuss.

“A court decision is more than its bottom line (that the judgement is affirmed or reversed) or its headline (that the Court overturned Roe v. Wade). It includes an opinion describing the Court’s rationale, which gives every reader an opportunity to critique the decision on the merits,” Barrett wrote.

Barrett argued that a headline only allows someone to decide if he or she “loves or hates the result,” while reading the opinion allows a person to understand if he or she agrees with the high court’s legal analysis of the issue.

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“The point is an informed citizen should know not only what the court did, but also why. Without the opinion, or at least a reliable proxy, an observer is simply not equipped to judge whether the Court’s decision is sound,” Barrett wrote, also calling opinions “the Court’s most important work product.”

The Supreme Court returns to Washington, D.C., for its term early next month, when it will start to hear oral arguments for a variety of cases over the coming months. While the justices have been away from Washington, they have still had to deal with an unusually busy emergency docket during the summer as lower courts rapidly block much of Trump’s agenda.