In the law, a close case is generally defined as a ruling that could conceivably be decided in more than one way.
[5] Maureen Armoor, for example, defines close cases as "the articulable outer limit of judicial discretion that most closely approximates the phenomenological experience of a sitting judge, in particular the dimension of discretion called into play when a judge is uncertain about an outcome".
[7] Likewise, a 1980 comment in the Stanford Law Review defined close cases as appellate decisions that generated multiple dissenting opinions.
[8] Northwestern University law professor John E. Coons observed that "[u]nder a system of winner-take-all the one-sided result reached upon principle in the close case must continue to trouble the conscience of the law".
[10] Calabresi argued that this process ultimately leads to the ongoing expansion of doctrine that was originally established only on a narrow basis.