rule
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 394 U.S. 759 - National Labor Relations Board v. Wyman-Gordon Co. · 1969Most cited · 1,534 citing opinions
Adjudicated cases may and do, of course, serve as vehicles for the formulation of agency policies, which are applied and announced therein. They generally provide a guide to action that the agency may be expected to take in future cases. Subject to the qualified role of stare decisis in the administrative process, they may serve as precedents. But this is far from saying, as the Solicitor General suggests, that commands, decisions, or policies announced in adjudication are 'rules' in the sense that they must, without more, be obeyed by the affected public.
How often courts cite the case defining “rule”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “rule” — 1,522 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.