Last week, the Supreme Court decided a closely-watched abortion case, Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, in a short unanimous opinion that sent the case back to the lower courts on narrow grounds to reevaluate the scope of the remedy. Today, in a campaign finance case argued just last week, Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC, the Court sent back the case in a unanimous 2-page per curiam opinion that will allow the lower court to consider an as-applied challenge to the statute. It's hard to know if two data points suggest a trend, but it will be interesting to see if the Roberts Court shows more interest in narrow and unanimous opinions than the Court did under Chief Justice Rehnquist.

  Incidentally, I'm placing my bet on the author of today's per curiam opinion with Justice Breyer. Justice Breyer likes to introduce reasons for a position using "for one thing" and "for another thing." From today's opinion:

It is not clear to us, however, that the District Court intended its opinion to rest on this ground. For one thing, the court used the word “may.” For another, its separate opinion WRTL’s challenge with prejudice characterized its previous opinion as holding that “WRTL’s ‘as-applied’ challenge to BCRA is foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision in McConnell.”

(emphasis added)

  No Justice uses that phrasing nearly as often as Breyer does, so I'm guessing Breyer drafted the per curiam opinion.