Supreme Court of New Hampshire v. Piper

The decision was not unanimous. Justice White, while concurring in the result, filed an opinion in which he argued that the residency requirement should be excepted in Piper's particular case, since she lived so near New Hampshire and "would be indistinguishable from other New Hampshire lawyers." But he also expressed his opinion that the case should be decided on those grounds alone. The Court need not, according to White, "decide the facial validity of the New Hampshire residency requirement." He thus agreed with the result of the decision, but not every aspect of Powell's opinion.

Justice Rehnquist filed a dissenting opinion, arguing that the practice of law was different from the practice of other professions. The practice of law, he asserted, was "non-national," since laws themselves were created locally and intended to respond to local interests. Rehnquist summarized:

Put simply, the State has a substantial interest in creating its own set of laws responsive to its own local interests, and it is reasonable for a State to decide that those people who have been trained to analyze law and policy are better equipped to write those state laws and adjudicate cases arising under them. The State therefore may decide that it has an interest in maximizing the number of resident lawyers, so as to increase the quality of the pool from which its lawmakers can be drawn.