Today’s Orders and Opinions

Monday, June 4th, 2007 10:41 am | Jason Harrow | Print This Post

The Order List is here.

NOTE: The Court did grant cert. in one case, FedEx v. Holowecki.

The opinion in Safeco is here.
The opinion in Uttecht is here.
The opinion in Sole is here.
The per curiam opinion dismissing Claiborne is here.



6 Comments »



  1. What is the Court’s policy on announcing per curiams from the bench? I’m pretty sure they announced Bush v. Gore, I doubt if they announced Claiborne. What about a 9th Circuit slapdown? And when they do it, who does it?

    roger friedman

    Comment by r.friedman — June 4, 2007 @ 11:52 am

  2. You need to look at the reason why the decision came out as a Per Curiam. In Bush v. Gore, it was because there was no reasoning that commanded five votes, even though the individual Justices had quite substantial separate concurring and dissenting opinions.

    In today’s P.C. decisions, there are no separate opinions. Both involve (in the Court’s view) straightforward unanimous applications of well settled law.

    Comment by Marc Shepherd — June 4, 2007 @ 12:59 pm

  3. Actually, I see that Justice Thomas did write separately (though briefly, and breaking no new ground) in the other P.C. case today.

    Comment by Marc Shepherd — June 4, 2007 @ 3:14 pm

  4. Erickson is not unanimous.

    Comment by Kent Scheidegger — June 4, 2007 @ 3:17 pm

  5. The practice appears to be that per curiam decisions are announced from the bench in argued cases, but not in cases decided on a summary basis without oral argument. Thus, Claiborne was announced from the bench today; in like manner, Roper v. Weaver, which was digged after argument, was announced from the bench. Erickson was not announced from the bench, nor were any of the other summary per curiam decisions earlier this term.
    Bush v. Gore was released around 10 PM on Tuesday, December 12, 2000. It was not announced from the bench, but that was not because the decision was per curiam.

    Comment by Ken Jost — June 4, 2007 @ 5:26 pm

  6. “In Bush v. Gore… there was no reasoning that commanded five votes.”
    I believe that Justice Scalia’s concurring opinion claimed to agree with the reasoning of the per curiam, only to be adding another ground for reversal. It then follows that the per curiae order to permanently end the recount on equal protection grounds since coming up with a new counting standard would not be possible before the statutory “safe harbor” deadline was an order whose reasoning had the support of a full court (namely the five conservative justices).

    Comment by Jacob Berlove — June 4, 2007 @ 10:52 pm

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