| Legal and judicial opinions |
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In law, a concurring opinion is in certain legal systems a written opinion by one or more judges of a court which agrees with the decision made by the majority of the court, but states different (or additional) reasons as the basis for their decision. When no absolute majority of the court can agree on the basis for deciding the case, the decision of the court may be contained in a number of concurring opinions, and the concurring opinion joined by the greatest number of judges is referred to as the plurality opinion.
As a practical matter, concurring opinions are slightly less useful to lawyers than majority opinions. Having failed to receive a majority of the court's votes, concurring opinions are not binding precedent and cannot be cited as such. But concurring opinions can sometimes be cited as a form of persuasive precedent (assuming the point of law is one on which there is no binding precedent already in effect). The conflict in views between a majority opinion and a concurring opinion can assist a lawyer in understanding the points of law articulated in the majority opinion. Occasionally, a judge will use a concurring opinion to signal an openness to certain types of test cases that would facilitate the development of a new legal rule, and in turn, such a concurring opinion may become more famous than the majority opinion in the same case. A well-known example of this phenomenon is Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. (1944). [1] [2]
Concurring opinions may be held by courts but not expressed: in many legal systems the court "speaks with one voice" and thus any concurring or dissenting opinions are not reported. Some view concurring opinions as "unnecessary confusion" that "encourage litigation" and create "legal clutter." [3]
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There are several kinds of concurring opinion. A simple concurring opinion arises when a judge joins the decision of the court but has something to add. Concurring in judgment means that the judge agrees with the majority decision (the case's ultimate outcome in terms of who wins and who loses) but not with the reasoning of the majority opinion (why one side wins and the other loses).
In some courts, such as the Supreme Court of the United States, the majority opinion may be broken down into numbered or lettered parts, and then concurring justices may state that they join some parts of the majority opinion, but not others, for the reasons given in their concurring opinion. [4] In other courts, such as the Supreme Court of California, the same justice may write a majority opinion and a separate concurring opinion to express additional reasons in support of the judgment (which are joined only by a minority). [5]
In some jurisdictions (e.g., California), the term may be abbreviated in certain contexts to conc. opn.
Precedent is a principle or rule established in a legal case that becomes authoritative to a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar legal issues or facts. The legal doctrine stating that courts should follow precedent is called stare decisis.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court upheld the right to have an abortion as established by the "essential holding" of Roe v. Wade (1973) and issued as its "key judgment" the restoration of the undue burden standard when evaluating state-imposed restrictions on that right. Both the essential holding of Roe and the key judgment of Casey were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, with its landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1 (2004), was a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawsuit, originally filed as Newdow v. United States Congress, Elk Grove Unified School District, et al. in 2000, led to a 2002 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance are an endorsement of religion and therefore violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The words had been added by a 1954 act of Congress that changed the phrase "one nation indivisible" into "one nation under God, indivisible". After an initial decision striking the congressionally added "under God", the superseding opinion on denial of rehearing en banc was more limited, holding that compelled recitation of the language by school teachers to students was invalid.
In law, a per curiamdecision or opinion is one that is not authored by or attributed to a specific judge, but rather to the entire court or panel of judges who heard the case. The term per curiam is Latin for 'by the court'.
Ratio decidendi is a Latin phrase meaning "the reason" or "the rationale for the decision". The ratio decidendi is "the point in a case that determines the judgement" or "the principle that the case establishes".
A plurality decision is a court decision in which no opinion received the support of a majority of the judges.
A dissenting opinion is an opinion in a legal case in certain legal systems written by one or more judges expressing disagreement with the majority opinion of the court which gives rise to its judgment.
In law, a majority opinion is a judicial opinion agreed to by more than half of the members of a court. A majority opinion sets forth the decision of the court and an explanation of the rationale behind the court's decision.
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. The procedures of the Court are governed by the U.S. Constitution, various federal statutes, and its own internal rules. Since 1869, the Court has consisted of one chief justice and eight associate justices. Justices are nominated by the president, and with the advice and consent (confirmation) of the U.S. Senate, appointed to the Court by the president. Once appointed, justices have lifetime tenure unless they resign, retire, or are removed from office.
Rapanos v. United States, 547 U.S. 715 (2006), was a United States Supreme Court case challenging federal jurisdiction to regulate isolated wetlands under the Clean Water Act. It was the first major environmental case heard by the newly appointed Chief Justice, John Roberts, and Associate Justice Samuel Alito. The Supreme Court heard the case on February 21, 2006, and issued a decision on June 19, 2006.
The procedures of the Supreme Court of Canada for hearing cases is established in the Rules of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Supreme Court Act, and by tradition.
Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374 (1978), was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that Wisconsin Statutes §§ 245.10 (1), (4), (5) (1973) violated the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause. Section 245.10 required noncustodial parents who were Wisconsin residents attempting to marry inside or outside of Wisconsin to seek a court order prior to receiving a marriage license. In order to receive such a court order, the noncustodial parent could not be in arrears on his or her child support, and the court had to believe that the child(ren) would not become dependent on the State.
A judicial opinion is a form of legal opinion written by a judge or a judicial panel in the course of resolving a legal dispute, providing the decision reached to resolve the dispute, and usually indicating the facts which led to the dispute and an analysis of the law used to arrive at the decision.
J. E. B. v. Alabama ex rel. T. B., 511 U.S. 127 (1994), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that peremptory challenges based solely on a prospective juror's sex are unconstitutional. J.E.B. extended the court's existing precedent in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), which found race-based peremptory challenges in criminal trials unconstitutional, and Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company (1991), which extended that principle to civil trials. As in Batson, the court found that sex-based challenges violate the Equal Protection Clause.
Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 24 Cal.2d 453, 150 P.2d 436 (1944), was a decision of the Supreme Court of California involving an injury caused by an exploding bottle of Coca-Cola. It was an important case in the development of the common law of product liability in the United States, not so much for the actual majority opinion, but for the concurring opinion of California Supreme Court justice Roger Traynor.
Dubitante is used in law reports of a judge who is doubtful about a legal proposition but hesitates to declare it wrong. E.g., "Justice X acquiesces in the Court's opinion and judgment dubitante on the question of Constitutional preemption."
Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U.S. 167 (1959), is a 6-to-3 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia should have abstained from deciding the constitutionality of three barratry, champerty, and maintenance laws in the state of Virginia until state courts had had a reasonable chance to construe them.
Kerry v. Din, 576 U.S. 86 (2015), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court analyzed whether there is a constitutional right to live in the United States with one's spouse and whether procedural due process requires consular officials to give notice of reasons for denying a visa application. In Justice Anthony Kennedy's concurring opinion, the controlling opinion in this case, he wrote that notice requirements “[do] not apply when, as in this case, a visa application is denied due to terrorism or national security concerns.” Because the consular officials satisfied notice requirements, there was no need for the Court to address the constitutional question about the right to live with one's spouse.
Davis v. Ayala, 576 U.S. 257 (2015), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a death sentence of a Hispanic defendant despite the fact that all Blacks and Hispanics were rejected from the jury during the defendant's trial. The case involved a habeas corpus petition submitted by Hector Ayala, who was arrested and tried in the late 1980s for the alleged murder of three individuals during an attempted robbery of an automobile body shop in San Diego, California in April 1985. At trial, the prosecution used peremptory challenges to strike all Black and Hispanic jurors who were available for jury service. The trial court judge allowed the prosecution to explain the basis for the peremptory challenges outside the presence of Ayala's counsel, "so as not to disclose trial strategy". Ayala was ultimately sentenced to death, but he filed several appeals challenging the constitutionality of the trial court's decision to exclude his counsel from the hearings.
Nieves v. Bartlett, 587 U.S. 391 (2019), was a civil rights case in which the Supreme Court of the United States decided that probable cause should generally defeat a retaliatory arrest claim brought under the First Amendment, unless officers under the circumstances would typically exercise their discretion not to make an arrest.
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