What are unpublished/non-precedential decisions?

When some courts issue a legal decision, they label the decision as “unpublished” or “non-precedential.” This leads to a common misconception that if CourtListener says something is “unpublished,” then the court intended for it to be private.

In truth, this is legal jargon meaning that the decision is not selected for inclusion in the official printed case books and cannot generally be cited as binding precedent.

This system was established in the sixties and seventies as courts realized that "too many opinions are being printed or published or otherwise disseminated."

To learn more about this topic, review Wikipedia or a scholarly study that goes into the history.

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