In legal writing, a dictum (Latin 'something that has been said'; plural dicta) is a statement made by a court.
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.
These subtypes include: In English law, a dictum is any statement made as part of a judgment of a court.
English lawyers do not, as a rule, categorise dicta more finely than into those that are obiter and those that are not.