Definition
Per curiam (Latin: "by the court") is a designation applied to a judicial opinion issued in the name of the court as a whole rather than attributed to any individual judge. A per curiam opinion signals collective authorship and institutional voice — the court speaks as a unit, without identifying which judge drafted the opinion.
In modern American appellate practice, per curiam opinions serve several distinct functions:
1. Brief affirmances or dispositions. Many per curiam opinions are short — sometimes a single paragraph — disposing of a case without extended reasoning, often where the result is thought to require no elaboration.
2. Unanimous or sensitive decisions. Courts occasionally issue per curiam opinions in high-profile or politically sensitive cases to emphasize institutional unity and diffuse individual judicial accountability.
3. Summary reversals. Appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, use per curiam opinions to summarily reverse lower court decisions, particularly on procedural or clearly settled grounds.
4. Chief justice or presiding judge attribution. In some historical usage, per curiam denoted an opinion delivered specifically by the chief justice or presiding judge on behalf of the court, a usage that has faded in modern practice.
Common Confusion
Per curiam is sometimes confused with en banc. They are related but distinct. En banc refers to the composition of the court — all judges of the court sitting together rather than a smaller panel. Per curiam refers to authorship attribution — an opinion issued without naming an individual author. A court sitting en banc may issue either a per curiam opinion or a signed opinion. Conversely, a three-judge panel can issue a per curiam opinion. The terms describe different things and should not be used interchangeably.
Per curiam should also be distinguished from memorandum opinions and unpublished dispositions, which serve similar brevity functions but carry different precedential weight rules depending on jurisdiction and court rules.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus will encounter per curiam designations across centuries of reports, and the designation's meaning has shifted enough to create interpretive traps.
First, precedential weight varies. In some jurisdictions and periods, per curiam opinions were treated as carrying full precedential authority; in others, especially modern federal circuits, abbreviated per curiam opinions may be designated unpublished or non-precedential. Assume nothing about precedential status from the designation alone — always check the court's rules and any accompanying notation.
Second, historical reports used per curiam loosely. In older English and early American reports, "per curiam" frequently introduced a brief remark from the bench during argument or at judgment — not a formal opinion at all, but a judicial aside captured by the reporter. Bouvier's entry reflects this: the phrase "occurs constantly in the reports" precisely because it was used for colloquial bench statements as well as formal collective opinions. Researchers reading pre-twentieth-century reports should not assume that a per curiam passage represents a deliberated, unanimous holding.
Third, the anonymity is sometimes intentional research bait. In landmark decisions — Bush v. Gore is the modern touchstone — the per curiam designation was itself a legal and political statement, inviting analysis of why individual authorship was suppressed. When per curiam appears in a high-stakes context, the attribution question is often worth pursuing in secondary sources, law review commentary, and judicial papers.
Fourth, Bouvier's entry conflates per curiam with per and cui, a writ-of-entry term, in a single paragraph. Researchers using Bouvier should be alert to this structural quirk — the per curiam definition begins mid-paragraph under the per and cui heading in many editions.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the core meaning — "by the court," distinguishing collective from individual judicial voice — but vary usefully in emphasis.
Black's (2nd Ed.) provides the most operationally complete historical definition, noting both the standard usage (distinguishing whole-court from individual-judge opinions) and the narrower historical usage (opinion by the chief justice or presiding judge). The citation to Clarke v. Western Assur. Co. is one of the few places a historical dictionary grounds this term in a specific case, making it a useful starting point for understanding how courts articulated the distinction in the late nineteenth century.
Burrill's is characteristically spare — "by the court; a phrase still used in the reports, and in some writs" — but the phrase "and in some writs" is a notable data point that the other dictionaries omit. It suggests per curiam had procedural-document usage beyond the reports, though Burrill's does not elaborate.
Bouvier's structural confusion noted above aside, the substantive content aligns with the other sources. The observation that the phrase "occurs constantly in the reports" is historically accurate and alerts researchers to its dual function as both formal opinion label and informal bench remark.
None of the historical dictionaries address what has become a central modern question: the precedential status of per curiam opinions. That analytical framework developed largely through twentieth-century court rules and is not reflected in any of the shelf sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Federal circuits have adopted differing rules on whether per curiam opinions may be cited as precedent, and the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (Rule 32.1, effective 2007) addressed unpublished opinions generally without resolving all per curiam questions. State court practice varies widely — some state supreme courts use per curiam routinely for routine affirmances; others reserve it for specific procedural contexts. Researchers should consult the relevant court's local rules before drawing conclusions about citability.