The doctrine of Per Incuriam & Per Curiam – Difference is very necessary to know from the point of study and profession. Let us see Doctrine of Per Incuriam & Per Curiam – Difference, in very simple language by which common man will get know about these new law terms.
What is Per Incuriam?
Meaning: Of a Judicial Decision was wrongly decided because the judge or judges were ill-informed about the applicability of the law. A judgment is per incuriam is one that has been rendered inadvertently.
Per incuriam, literally translated as “through lack of care”, refers to a judgment of a court that has been decided without reference to a statutory provision or earlier judgment that would have been relevant.
Illustration of Per Incuriam:- Two (02) illustrations come to mind.
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where the judge has forgotten to take account of a previous decision to which the doctrine of stare decisis applies. For all the care with which attorneys and judges may comb the case law, errare humanum est, and sometimes a judgment which clarifies a point to be settled is somehow not indexed and is forgotten. It is in case such in ignorance of that judgment that should have been considered binding and in ignorance of that judgment with no, mention of it, must be deemed rendered per incuriam. “Thus it has no authority…”
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The second illustration of Per Incuriam, where the judgment was rendered in ignorance of legislation of which they should have taken account. For a judgment to be deemed per incuriam that judgment must show that the legislation was not invoked.
Finally…as a general rule, the only cases in which decisions should be held to have been given per incuriam are hose of decisions given in ignorance or forgetfulness of some inconsistent statutory provisions or forgetfulness of some inconsistent statutory provisions or of some authority binding on the Court concerned, so that in such cases some features of the decision or some step in the reasoning on which it is based is found on the account to be demonstrably wrong.
What is Per Curiam?
Meaning:- Per Curiam used to distinguish an opinion of the whole court from an opinion of the whole court from an opinion written by any one judge. Sometimes it denotes an opinion by the chief justice or presiding judges or to a brief announcement of the disposition of a case by the court not accompanied by a written statement.
Latin for “by the court.” An opinion from an appellate court that does not identify any specific judge who may have written the opinion. Per Curiam decisions are given that label by the court issuing the opinion, and these opinions tend to be short. The opinions will typically deal with issues that the issuing court views as relatively non-controversial.
Per Curiam decisions are not always unanimous and non-controversial. So this is only the difference between these two law terms and there is nothing to know about the Doctrine of Per Incuriam & Per Curiam – Difference.