Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 305.0

524US1

Unit: $U85

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260

HOHN v. UNITED STATES

Scalia, J., dissenting

same precedential effect as does a case decided upon full
Id., at 651, n. 1. But the sole au-
brieﬁng and argument.”
thority cited for that dictum was Edelman v. Jordan, 415
U. S. 651 (1974), which declined to give stare decisis effect,
not to opinions that had been issued without brieﬁng and
argument, but to judgments that had been issued without
opinion—“summary afﬁrmances” that did not “contain any
substantive discussion” of the point at issue or any other
point, id., at 670–671. Such judgments, afﬁrming without
comment the disposition appealed from, were common in the
days when this Court had an extensive mandatory jurisdic-
tion; they carried little more weight than denials of certio-
rari. House, by contrast, was a six-page opinion with sub-
stantive discussion on the point at issue here.
It reasoned:
(1) “Our authority . . . extends only to cases ‘in a circuit court
of appeals . . . .’ ”
(2) “Here the case was never ‘in’ the court
of appeals,” because of (3) “want of a certiﬁcate of probable
324 U. S., at 44.2 And it cited as authority Fergu-
cause.”
son v. District of Columbia, 270 U. S. 633 (1926). The new
rule that the Court today announces—that our opinions ren-
dered without full brieﬁng and argument (hitherto thought
to be the strongest indication of certainty in the outcome)
have a diminished stare decisis effect—may well turn out to
be the principal point for which the present opinion will be
It can be expected to affect the treatment of
remembered.
many signiﬁcant per curiam opinions by the lower courts,
and the willingness of Justices to undertake summary dispo-
sition in the future.

2 The concurrence asserts that this analysis was “virtually unreasoned.”
Ante, at 253 (opinion of Souter, J.).
It seems to me, to the contrary, that
there was virtually nothing more to be said. Not until today has anyone
thought that a “case” could consist of a disembodied request to appeal.
The concurrence joins the Court in relying upon a truly eccentric argu-
ment, and then blames the House Court for not discussing this eccentricity
at length.