Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
⚖️ Unsigned court ruling ⚖️ By the whole court
per curiam

per curiam

1 9.9
A court decision made by all judges without saying who wrote it
  • noun
  • /pɜr ˈkjʊəriˌæm/
  • Formal
translation icon : opinión per curiam
  • In a surprising move, the Supreme Court issued a per curiam ruling that clarified its previous decisions.
  • per curiam opinion

Examples

  • The per curiam decision by the appellate court was met with both praise and criticism from legal experts.

  • This per curiam decision designed to cut off all discussion demonstrates that very, very clearly.

    Blog text (15)

  • The decision takes the form of a short per curiam, a concurrence by Prosser and two dissents.

    Blog text (9)

  • Alternatively, the Court could itself engage in the precedential analysis and provide "a brief per curiam notice at the beginning of its decision" instructing lower courts "which opinion is controlling." 280

    Academic text (2017)

  • The Ninth Circuit concluded its per curiam opinion with a general admonition: "The process of segregating electronic data that is seizable from that which is not must not become a vehicle for the government to gain access to data which it has no probable cause to collect." (103)

    Academic text (2018)

  • The judges released a per curiam opinion that addressed several key legal issues in the case.

Synonyms

ruling
vsper curiam
  • Formal
430 4.9

An official written explanation by a judge for a court decision

is announced collectively by judges and commonly has no named author
opinion
vsper curiam
  • Formal
258 7.0

A written statement by a judge explaining why they decided a case

is issued collectively by judges without naming an individual author
judgment
vsper curiam
  • Formal
181 2.6

A formal decision given by a court in a legal case

is produced collectively by judges and usually lacks an author
legal opinion
vsper curiam
  • Formal
7 6.1

A written statement by a judge or court explaining why they decided a case

is delivered collectively by judges, usually without a named author

Surface Forms

per curiam singular
per curiae plural

Morphology

per + curiam

This is a Latin legal formula whose meaning ('a court decision issued collectively') cannot be derived from the English preposition 'per' alone, and the second constituent 'curiam' is not a common English word (missing from the dictionary). Because it is specialized legal/Latin vocabulary rather than a transparent composition of known English words, a B1 learner knowing the listed constituents would not be able to predict its meaning.

Etymology

The noun per curiam comes from Latin: per means 'by' and curiam means 'the court'. It names a short court 'opinion' written for the whole court, with no single judge named, so a per curiam is the court's collective 'decision' and is often 'unsigned'.