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Notes -
Americans can correct me if I'm wrong but from what I hear, their votes are worth the same. Seniority matters as to who decides who gets to write opinions. The most senior member of the majority (which is automatically the chief justice if he is in the majority) assigns redaction of the opinion to one of the members of the majority. Same happens for the dissenting opinion (most senior judge in the dissent, automatically the chief justice if he is dissenting with the majority, choses who writes the opinion).
So seniority is important, but not THAT important. What does matter though is that their opinion is taken into serious consideration by other judges. Ideally, a judge to the Supreme Court should never be a blindly partisan hack, but in practice it can (very charitably) said that they are at least preselected for an extreme adherence to one school of thought with regard to how flexible the Constitution should be. But a particularly eloquent opinion might be able to sway swing votes or even peel off a justice or two from the other bloc, so experience and quality as a justice matters.
The reasoning in opinions also impact law students. Scalia’s textualism became much more pronounced when lawyers who read his opinions in law school came to dominate the practice.
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