I've blogged a lot recently about limits on pseudonymous litigation, and readers will have gathered that I think such litigation should generally not be allowed. But "generally" isn't "always" (much more on that here), nor do I think that it should be always. (I explained in my post about Doe v. Volokh why I thought the underlying case I wrote about there was rightly depseudonymized, but that had to do with particular features of that case.)
And of course we've heard of plenty of pseudonymous cases: Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Reed, Santa Fe Indep. School Dist. v. Doe, Plyer v. Doe, and more. None of those Supreme Court opinions discuss pseudonymity at length, but they're obviously open to it. What justifies pseudonymity there, where the legal rule is usually strongly against pseudonymity in other cases?
The chief distinction has to do with the key function of identifying parties' names: the ability of the public to supervise the judicial process, and to monitor whether the factfinding related to the parties is sound. And that's why courts are generally more open to pseudonymity in cases that "present[]" "purely legal … issues"—chiefly the legal validity or invalidity of a such statute (as in Roe). In such cases, the courts conclude, "there is an atypically weak public interest in knowing the litigants' identities." (That's from the Second Circuit's leading pseudonymity case, fittingly titled Sealed Plaintiff v. Sealed Defendant, as well as from the Third Circuit's Doe v. Megless.)
