A Modest Proposal for Regulating Unpublished, Non-Precedential Federal Appellate Opinions While Courts and Litigants Adapt to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1
Journal of Appellate Practice and Process, Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 17, Spring 2007
19 Pages Posted: 19 Mar 2008
Date Written: 2007
Abstract
Federal appellate courts are overworked. To handle their overloaded dockets, appellate judges have adopted a wide variety of measures intended to promote efficiency, including deciding approximately eighty percent of appeals in nonprecedential opinions.
Courts and litigants currently are adapting to new Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32.1, which prohibits courts from restricting the citation of non-precedential opinions. Whether it is constitutional for federal appellate courts to issue non-precedential opinions is outside the scope of this essay. Putting the constitutional question aside, as a practical matter, at least for now non-precedential opinions should not be eliminated in favor of universal publication of opinions as precedent. That would be a dramatic break from several decades of federal appellate court practice. Moreover, universal publication as precedent would risk repetitive rulings and increased need for en banc overruling of inconsistent circuit precedent.
However, as an interim measure, and without ruling out future structural reforms, this essay proposes that federal appellate courts modify their internal operating procedures or local rules. Circuit courts should expressly confer persuasive value on non-precedential opinions, provide specific criteria to guide the publication decision, and permit anyone-not just parties - to move the court to reissue a non-precedential opinion as a precedential opinion. The proposed modifications would help to better ensure that non-precedential opinions are consistent with precedential opinions from the same circuit, that like cases are treated alike, that issues resolved at the appellate level need not be relitigated before district courts, and that nonprecedential opinions truly are limited to repetitive applications of settled law.
Keywords: unpublished opinions, non-precedential, appellate, federal courts, procedure, legal education, legal writing, Rule 32.1, federal rules
JEL Classification: K10, K19, K30, K39, K40, K41, K49
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation