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In legal writing, a dictum ( Latin 'something that has been said'; plural dicta) is a statement made by a court. It may or may not be binding as a precedent.
In United States legal terminology, a dictum is a statement of opinion considered authoritative (although not binding), given the recognized authority of the person who pronounced it. [1]
There are multiple subtypes of dicta, although due to their overlapping nature, legal practitioners in the U.S. colloquially use dictum to refer to any statement by a court the scope of which extends beyond the issue before the court. Dicta in this sense are not binding under the principle of stare decisis, but tend to have a strong persuasive effect, by virtue of having been stated in an authoritative decision, or by an authoritative judge, or both. These subtypes include:
In English law, a dictum is any statement made as part of a judgment of a court. Thus the term includes dicta stated incidentally, in passing ( obiter dicta), that are not a necessary part of the rationale for the court's decision (referred to as the ratio decidendi). English lawyers do not, as a rule, categorise dicta more finely than into those that are obiter and those that are not.[ citation needed]