Court Opinion

ID: 9428555
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:07.025501+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.251031
License: Public Domain

*349Justice Marshall,
dissenting.
I write separately to underscore my disapproval of what I perceive to be a growing and inexplicable readiness on the part of this Court to “dispose of’ cases summarily. Perhaps this trend is due to what is often lamented as our “increasing caseload.” Whatever the reason for this trend, I believe that it can only detract from this Court’s decisions in deserving cases by consuming time and energy better spent elsewhere.
Moreover, by deciding cases summarily, without benefit of oral argument and full briefing, and often with only limited access to, and review of, the record, this Court runs a great risk of rendering erroneous or ill-advised decisions that may confuse the lower courts: there is no reason to believe that this Court is immune from making mistakes, particularly under these kinds of circumstances. As Justice Jackson so aptly put it, although in a somewhat different context: “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.” Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 540 (1953) (concurring in result). I believe that this Court should reserve its final imprimatur for those cases to which we give plenary review, after full briefing and argument.
*350This is not to say that I believe that summary disposition is never appropriate. In my view, however, this Court should utilize this practice with more caution than has been true in the recent past.