The U.S. Supreme Court has adopted a rule change that will allow lawyers to cite "unpublished opinions" in federal courts starting next year. The new rule takes effect unless Congress rejects the change by December 1.

This rule change is a major change in the long-running debate over unpublished opinions, the often short opinions that resolve upward of 80 percent of cases in federal appeals courts nationwide. In some circuits these dispositions could not be cited as precedent.

Most of these opinions are available now on legal databases. Some federal judges have argued that if this category of opinions can be cited and used as precedent, they will take more time to decide and write, sharply increasing the backlog of cases. Many sentencing appeals, for example, are resolved by unpublished opinions.