2011 term per curiam opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down fourteen per curiam opinions during its 2011 term, which began October 3, 2011 and concluded September 30, 2012.

Because per curiam decisions are issued from the Court as an institution, these opinions all lack the attribution of authorship or joining votes to specific justices. All justices on the Court at the time the decision was handed down are assumed to have participated and concurred unless otherwise noted.

Court membership
Chief Justice: John Roberts

Associate Justices: Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan

Cavazos v. Smith
{{SCOTUS per curiam
 * fullcasename=Javier Cavazos, Acting Warden, v. Shirley Ree Smith
 * citation=565 U.S. 1
 * datedecided=October 31, 2011
 * summary=Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded.

The Court reversed, for the third time, a judgment of the Ninth Circuit that had set aside the conviction of a woman for the death of her infant grandson attributed to shaken baby syndrome (SBS). The Court ruled that the Ninth Circuit's judgment, which had questioned the sufficiency of the expert testimony supporting SBS as the victim's cause of death, was contrary to the deferential standard of review established by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 for such petitions.

Ginsburg filed a dissent, joined by Breyer and Sotomayor.

Smith's sentence was subsequently commuted by California Governor Jerry Brown to time served, releasing her after a decade in prison.

Tennant v. Jefferson County
{{SCOTUS per curiam
 * fullcasename=Natalie E. Tennant, West Virginia Secretary of State, et al. v. Jefferson County Commission, et al.
 * citation=567 U.S. 758
 * datedecided=September 25, 2012
 * summary=District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia reversed and remanded.

The Court ruled that the federal district court gave the state insufficient deference to its political judgment when it invalidated a legislative redistricting map as contrary to the constitutional principle of "one person, one vote."