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Hiding Behind The Cloak Of Invisibility: The Supreme Court And Per Curiam Opinions, Ira P. Robbins
Hiding Behind The Cloak Of Invisibility: The Supreme Court And Per Curiam Opinions, Ira P. Robbins
Ira P. Robbins
Per curiam--literally translated from Latin to "by the court"-is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as "[a]n opinion handed down by an appellate court without identifying the individual judge who wrote the opinion." Accordingly the author of a per curiam opinion is meant to be institutional rather than individual, attributable to the court as an entity rather than to a single judge The United States Supreme Court issues a significant number of per curiam dispositions each Term. In the first six years of Chief Justice John Roberts’ tenure, almost nine percent of the Court full opinions were per curiams. The prevalence …