Judges and Judiciary
Feb. 26, 2015
The perils of nonprecedential opinions
The practice of issuing unpublished, supposedly nonprecedential, opinions is simply harmful to appellate justice. By David R. Cleveland
Recently, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, questioned the Fourth Circuit's issuance of a 40-page unpublished opinion. Plumley v. Austin, 14-271 (2015) (J. Thomas, dissent from denial of certiorari). Thomas opined that, "By any standard - and certainly by the Fourth Circuit's own - this decision should have been published.... It is hard to imagine a reason that the Court of Appeals would not have ...
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