Stutson v. U.S.

• Decision Date: 08 January 1996
• Docket Number: 949323
• Citation: 116 S.Ct. 600,516 U.S. 193,133 L.Ed.2d 571
• Parties: Anthony Leo STUTSON v. UNITED STATES. Alexis LAWRENCE, Guardian and Next Friend on Behalf of Kemmerlyn D. LAWRENCE, a Minor, v. Shirley S. CHATER, Commissioner of Social Security
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

516 U.S. 193

116 S.Ct. 611

133 L.Ed.2d 571

Anthony Leo STUTSON

v UNITED STATES.

Alexis LAWRENCE, Guardian and Next Friend on

Behalf of Kemmerlyn D. LAWRENCE, a Minor,

v. Shirley S. CHATER, Commissioner of

Social Security.

Nos. 94-8988, 94-9323.

Supreme Court of the United States

Jan. 8. 1996.

On Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

On Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

For majority opinions of the court, see --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 600, --- L.Ed.2d ---- and --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 604, --- L.Ed.2d ----.

Justice STEVENS, concurring.

The Court persuasively explains why we have "the power to remand to a lower federal court any case raising a federal issue which is properly before us in our appellate capacity." No. 94-9323, at ----, 116 S.Ct. at 606. That conclusion comports with a primary characteristic—and, I believe, virtue —of our discretionary authority to manage our certiorari docket: our ability to apply the "totality-of-the-circumstances" approach that Justice SCALIA finds objectionable. Post, at __. The Court's wise disposition of these petitions falls squarely within th e best traditions of its administration of that docket. I therefore join the Court's opinions.

Chief Justice REHNQUIST, concurring in No. 94-9323 and dissenting in No. 94-8988.

I agree, for the reasons given by Justice SCALIA, that the Court is mistaken in vacating the judgment in No. 94-8988, Stutson v. United States. I also agree with much of the rest of Justice SCALIA's dissent, but I do not agree with that portion post, at __, dealing with what he describes as "situations calling forth the special deference owed to state law and state courts in our system of federalism." Of the three cases which he cites for this proposition, one, Missouri ex rel. Wabash R. Co. v. Public Serv. Comm'n, 273 U.S. 126, 47 S.Ct. 311, 71 L.Ed. 575 (1927), came to this Court on writ of error and therefore was required to be decided on the merits. The second, State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Duel, 324 U.S. 154, 65 S.Ct. 573, 89 L.Ed. 812 (1945), came to us on appeal from a State Supreme Court, and was thus also required to be decided on the merits. The third, Huddleston v. Dwyer, 322 U.S. 232, 64 S.Ct. 1015, 88 L.Ed. 1246 (1944), was a case in which certiorari had already been granted, and the case argued on the merits. None of them, then, involved a choice between denying certiorari, on the one hand, and simply vacating the judgment of the lower court without any opinion, on the other. Vacating a judgment without explanation when the alternative is to simply deny certiorari involves at best the correction of perceived error made by the lower courts. In this connection, we would do well to bear in mind the admonition of Chief Justice William Howard Taft, one of the architects of the Certiorari Act of 1925, as described by his biographer:

"It was vital, he said in opening his drive for the Judges' bill, that cases before the Court be reduced without limiting the function of pronouncing 'the last word on every important issue under the Constitution and the statutes of the United States.' A Supreme Court, on the other hand, should not be a tribunal obligated to weigh justice among contesting parties.

'They have had all they have a right to claim,' Taft said, 'when they have had two courts in which to have adjudicated their controversy.' " 2 H. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft 997-998 (1939).

I agree with the decision announced in the per curiam to vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in No. 94-9323, Lawrence v. Chater. Whether or not the change of position by the Social Security Administration is "cognizable," in the words of Justice SCALIA, post, at __, it is perfectly reasonable to request the Court of Appeals to answer that question in the first instance.

Justice SCALIA, with whom Justice THOMAS joins, dissenting.

I dissent because I believe that the dispositions in both No. 94-8988 and No. 94-9323 are improper extensions of our limited power to vacate without first finding error below.

It sometimes occurs that, after having considered the lower court decision and found error, an appellate court merely reverses or vacates and then remands—that is, it sets the judgment aside and sends the case back to the lower court for further proceedings, rather than entering or directing entry of judgment for the appellant or petitioner. That is the appropriate course whenever the finding of error does not automatically entitle the appellant or petitioner to judgment, and the appellate court cannot conduct (or chooses not to conduct) the further inquiry necessary to resolve the questions remaining in the litigation. Our books are full of such cases, from Glass v. Sloop Betsey, 3 Dall. 6, 1 L.Ed 485 (1794), and Clarke v. Russell, 3 Dall. 415, 1 L.Ed. 660 (1799), to Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. ----, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995), and Tuggle v. Netherland, 516 U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 283, 133 L.Ed.2d 251 (1995).

What is at issue here, however, is a dif ferent sort of creature, which might be called "no-fault V & R": vacation of a judgment and remand without any determination of error in the judgment below. In our discretionary certiorari system of review, such an order has acquired the acronym "GVR"—for the Court grants certiorari, vacates the judgment below, and remands for further proceedings.¹ The question presented by today's cases is whether there is any limitation (other than the mandate "do what is fair") upon this practice. The Court's per curiam opinions answer "no"; I disagree.

Title 28 U.S.C. § 2106 provides that "[t]he Supreme Court or any other court of appellate jurisdiction may affirm, modify, vacate, set aside or reverse any judgment, decree, or order of a court lawfully brought before it for review, and may remand the cause and direct the entry of such appropriate judgment, decree, or order, or require such further proceedings to be had as may be just under the circumstances." This facially unlimited statutory text is subject to the implicit limitations imposed by traditional practice and by the nature of the appellate system created by the Constitution and laws of the United States. The inferior federal courts (to say nothing of state courts) are not the creatures and agents of this body—as are Masters, whose work we may reject and send back for redoing at our own pleasure. Inferior courts are separately authorized in the Constitution, see Art. I, § 8; Art. III, § 1, created by Acts of Congress, see, e.g., Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73; Evarts Act, Act of Mar. 3, 1891, 26 Stat. 826, and staffed by judges whose manner of appointment and tenure of office are the same as our own, see U.S. Const., Art. II, § 2; Art. III, § 1; 28 U.S.C. §§ 44, 133, 134. Despite the unqualified language of § 2106, we cannot, for example, "reverse" a judgment of one of these courts "and direct the entry" of a different judgment whenever we disagree with what has been done, but only when we can identify a controlling error of law. And I think we cannot "vacate" and "remand" in the circumstances here.

The Court today seeks to portray our "no-fault V & R" practice as traditionally covering a kaleidoscopic diversity of situations. See No. 94-9323, at ---- - ----, 116 S.Ct. at 606-607. That is in my view a misportrayal; the practice has always been limited to a few discrete categories of cases. It began, apparently, in situations calling forth the special deference owed to state law and state courts in our system of federalism. In Missouri ex rel. Wabash R. Co. v. Public Serv. Comm'n, 273 U.S. 126, 47 S.Ct. 311, 71 L.Ed. 575 (1927), for example, rather than find error on the basis of the federal constitutional claims raised, this Court set aside the judgment of the Missouri Supreme Court and remanded the case to that court for further proceedings so that it could consider the meaning and effect of a state statute that had been enacted after its judgment had been entered. We reasoned that "[w]hile this Court may decide these [state-law] questions, it is not obliged to do so, and in view of their nature, we deem it appropriate to refer the determination to the state court." Id., at 131, 47 S.Ct. at 313. In other words, we left it to the state court to decide the effect of the intervening event, rather than follow our usual practice of deciding that question for ourselves, see, e.g., Steamship Co. v. Joliffe, 2 Wall. 450, 456-458, 17 L.Ed. 805 (1865). See generally United States v. Schooner Peggy, 1 Cranch 103, 110, 2 L.Ed. 49 (1801) ("if, subsequent to the judgment [entered by a lower court], and before the decision of the appellate court, a law intervenes and positively changes the rule which governs, the law must be obeyed, or its obligation denied"). Later cases took the same deferential approach to state courts when the intervening event consisted of one of our own opinions. See, e.g., State Tax Comm'n v. Van Cott, 306 U.S. 511, 59 S.Ct. 605, 83 L.Ed. 950 (1939). By 1945, we could state that it was "[a] customary procedure" for the Court "to vacate the judgment of [a] state court where there has been a supervening event since its rendition which alters the basis upon which the judgment rests, and to remand the case so that the court from which it came might reconsider the question in light of the changed circumstances." State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Duel, 324 U.S. 154, 161, 65 S.Ct. 573, 577, 89 L.Ed. 812 (1945). Similarly, where a federal court of appeals' decision on a point of state law had been cast in doubt by an intervening state supreme court decision, it became our practice to vacate and remand so that the question could be decided by judges "familiar with the intricacies and trends of local law and practice." Huddleston v. Dwyer, 322 U.S. 232,...