In law, “per curiam” is Latin for “by the court,” and it labels a judicial opinion issued in the name of the entire court rather than attributed to any individual judge. You see the phrase most often on appellate decisions, including at the U.S. Supreme Court, where it signals that the ruling speaks for the bench as an institution. The label carries more nuance than most people realize: per curiam opinions are not always short, not always unanimous, and not always low-stakes.
How a Per Curiam Opinion Differs From a Signed One
In most appellate cases, one judge writes the opinion and puts their name on it. Other judges may join that opinion, file a separate concurrence explaining their own reasoning, or write a dissent. The named author takes personal responsibility for the legal analysis, and lawyers can track that judge’s reasoning across cases.
A per curiam opinion strips away that individual attribution. The document opens by identifying “the Court” as the speaker, with no indication of who drafted the text. The framing emphasizes institutional authority over any single member’s perspective. When you see “per curiam” at the top of an opinion, nobody is claiming personal credit or blame for what follows.
Individual judges can still file separate concurrences or dissents alongside a per curiam opinion. The unsigned label applies only to the lead opinion itself, so you can end up with an anonymous majority opinion surrounded by signed side documents.
Per Curiam Does Not Mean Unanimous
A common misconception is that a per curiam opinion reflects a court in full agreement. It often does, but not always. Some of the most bitterly divided Supreme Court decisions in American history arrived as per curiam opinions.
In Bush v. Gore (2000), the Supreme Court’s per curiam opinion effectively decided a presidential election. Seven justices agreed that Florida’s manual recount violated the Equal Protection Clause, but only five agreed on the remedy of stopping the recount entirely. Three justices filed separate concurrences, and four filed dissents.
The Pentagon Papers case, New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), is even more striking. The per curiam opinion itself was just a few sentences long, holding that the government had not met the heavy burden required to justify blocking publication. Six justices then wrote separate concurrences and three wrote dissents, producing nine individual opinions attached to a single unsigned ruling.
In both cases, the per curiam label did not signal consensus. It signaled that the court wanted to speak institutionally on an issue where speed or gravity demanded a collective voice, even though the individual justices deeply disagreed about the reasoning.
When Courts Issue Per Curiam Opinions
The format shows up in a few recurring situations, each with a different purpose.
Routine and Uncontroversial Cases
The most common use is for straightforward matters where the law is settled and the judges agree. If a lower court made an error that clearly contradicts existing precedent, the appellate court can correct it through a brief, unsigned opinion rather than assigning a judge to write a full analysis. These opinions tend to be short and focused on applying established rules rather than creating new ones.
Summary Reversals
At the Supreme Court, a summary reversal happens when the justices conclude a lower court ruling is so plainly wrong that they can overturn it without briefing or oral argument. These reversals are typically issued as per curiam opinions tucked into the Court’s weekly order lists. The procedure skips the usual lengthy process, but the resulting decision still binds lower courts.
Equally Divided Courts
When the Supreme Court splits evenly, usually because a seat is vacant, the result is a one-line per curiam order affirming the lower court’s decision. These carry a unique limitation: they resolve the case for the parties involved but set no precedent. Future courts are not bound by the outcome, and the order typically offers no reasoning at all.
Emergency Applications and the Shadow Docket
The Supreme Court’s emergency docket, sometimes called the “shadow docket,” handles stay applications, injunction requests, and other time-sensitive matters outside the normal briefing schedule. Many of these orders are issued per curiam. The practice has drawn increasing attention as the Court has used the shadow docket to decide consequential questions on election law, immigration enforcement, and public health measures, often with minimal written explanation.
Is a Per Curiam Opinion Binding Precedent?
Whether a per curiam opinion carries binding authority depends on whether it is published. The distinction matters far more at the federal circuit court level than at the Supreme Court.
A published per curiam opinion from any federal court is fully binding precedent. Lower courts must follow it, and lawyers can cite it in briefs just like any signed opinion. Every per curiam opinion the Supreme Court issues falls into this category.
At the federal circuit court level, however, the majority of opinions are designated “unpublished” or “non-precedential,” and many of these are per curiam. An unpublished per curiam opinion resolves the dispute between the parties but does not create binding law that other courts must follow. The issuing court’s future panels are not bound by it either, which lets circuit courts handle routine cases without expanding mandatory precedent with every ruling.
Lawyers can still reference unpublished opinions in their briefs. Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1 prohibits courts from banning citation to unpublished federal opinions issued on or after January 1, 2007. Citing one is more like pointing to a persuasive example than invoking binding authority: the court considering your argument is free to ignore it.
How Per Curiam Opinions Are Cited
Under standard legal citation format, a per curiam opinion is cited the same way as any other case, with one addition: a parenthetical noting “(per curiam)” appears after the date. For example: Wearry v. Cain, 577 U.S. 385 (2016) (per curiam). The flag alerts the reader that no individual author is identified, which can matter when evaluating the opinion’s significance or tracing a particular justice’s jurisprudence.
Why the Practice Is Criticized
The anonymity of per curiam opinions has drawn criticism for as long as the practice has existed. Thomas Jefferson called it “certainly convenient for the lazy, the modest, & the incompetent.” Modern critics raise a more structural concern: when no judge’s name is attached to a decision, nobody can be held individually accountable for the reasoning.
Signed opinions put a judge’s professional reputation on the line. Other judges, lawyers, and legal scholars can evaluate the author’s logic, track how their reasoning evolves across cases, and publicly critique sloppy analysis. Per curiam opinions short-circuit that accountability mechanism. As then-Circuit Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg once observed, public disclosure of who wrote an opinion “puts the judge’s conscience and reputation on the line.”
The concern deepens when per curiam opinions address significant legal questions. Without an identified author, lower courts and lawyers have a harder time interpreting the decision’s implications. With a signed opinion, you can study the author’s broader judicial philosophy to understand what the language likely means. A per curiam opinion offers no such anchor.
Defenders counter that per curiam opinions reinforce the idea that the law speaks through institutions rather than individuals, and that the format works well where the answer is clear enough that individual attribution adds nothing. The tension becomes sharpest when courts use the label for high-stakes, closely divided rulings where transparency matters most.