Precedent, Judicial Power, and the Constitutionality of "No-Citation" Rules in the Federal Courts of Appeals

Abstract

On April 13, 1996, Faye Anastasoff mailed a tax refund claim to the IRS. The deadline for the claim was April 15; Anastasoff believed that by mailing it before the deadline, the claim was valid. Ordinarily, she would have been right; the so-called “mailbox rule”1 provides that in most instances, a claim is timely upon receipt if it is postmarked by the original deadline. The IRS received Anastasoff’s claim on April 16, and rejected it under an obscure exception to the mailbox rule.2 In the ensuing litigation, the district court rejected Anastasoff’s claim that the mailbox rule applied in her case.3 On appeal to the Eighth Circuit, the government provided Anastasoff with a copy of Christie v. United States,4 an unpublished decision involving a fact-pattern identical to Anastasoff’s. The Eighth Circuit’s Rule 28A(i) provides that “[u]npublished opinions are not precedent and parties generally should not cite them,” although such opinions may be cited if they “[have] persuasive value on a material issue and no published opinion . . . would serve as well.”5 During oral argument, Circuit Judge Richard Arnold asked Anastasoff’s attorney what he thought about the Christie decision. The lawyer’s response? “[Christie is] not binding on this court.”6 The court disagreed. In Anastasoff v. United States,7 a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit ruled that Rule 28A(i), a type of “no-citation” rule prevalent