Explaining why the Supreme Court dismisses cases as "improvidently granted" would "would only confuse attorneys, judges, and litigants," Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley wrote in Winnebago County v D.E. W., a case that ended with such an unexplained dismissal.
She was responding to Justice Rebecca Dallet's call for more transparency in those cases, as Justice Ann Walsh Bradley did in Amazon Logistics Inc. v Labor and Industry Review Commission. Grassl Bradley opposed the idea in that case as well.
"The court's recent practice of issuing terse per curiam decisions dismissing cases as improvidently granted fails to provide guidance to litigants and the public," Dallet wrote in her dissent in the Winnebago County case.
"Moreover," she wrote, quoting Walsh Bradley "failing to provide such an explanation may 'effective[ly] negat[e] . . . the numerous hours of work and sums of money spent seeking a decision on the merits. '"
"For these reasons, there is a strong public policy rationale for following our older practice of providing an explanation for such dismissals," Dallet said.
Grassl Bradley didn't buy the argument that parties deserve know why their cases die at the hands of the justices.
"Offering nothing more than a generalized invocation of a 'strong public policy rationale,'
Justice Dallet fails to justify a departure from this court's custom of dismissing cases as improvidently granted without commentary," Grassl Bradley wrote.
"In certain situations, a majority may not agree on the legal rationale for dismissing a particular case without a decision," she said. "Attempting to craft a potentially fractured rationale would not benefit the parties."
Justices, however, can write separate opinions explaining their own reasoning in each case. That's why dissents and concurrences exist and fractured opinions are common. In this very Winnebago case, for example, Dallet, joined by Walsh Bradley, dissented and Grassl Bradley, joined by Justices Annette Ziegler and Brian Hagedorn, concurred.
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