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Rh of case-by-case adjudication, which “assumes that judicial decisions are valuable and should not be cast aside lightly.” Chapman, 598 U. S., at –––. Our legal system rests not only on the holdings of this Court, but also on the reasoned decisions of duly authorized lower court judges. Jurists presiding over cases at every level have a duty “to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). That mootness can sometimes leave parties unable to appeal does not bear on the continued validity of those lower court opinions in any respect.

We do not consider a court’s judgment to be any less binding on the parties simply because there is not an appeal; appeal or not, lower court rulings are still law. And it is not as if a decision rendered by a lower court is less than final, or is not perfected, unless and until it receives the imprimatur of this Court. Indeed, many lower court determinations are not even appealable as a matter of law. See, e. g., 28 U. S. C. § 1447(d) (providing that, with limited exceptions, “[a]n order remanding a case to the State court from which it was removed is not reviewable on appeal or otherwise”); cf. § 1292(a) (authorizing appeals of only certain kinds of interlocutory orders). Our legal system regards those decisions as pronouncements of law nevertheless.

In other words, even if a party cannot appeal, or opts not to do so, lower court judgments are binding and presumptively valid. And the lack of an appeal, on its own, does not suffice to rebut that presumption. Any suggestion to the contrary misunderstands the scope of the authority that all federal judges have pursuant to Article III, and disrespects the time and talent of the jurists who have previously undertaken to assess the merits of the matter.

Nor is the validity of a lower court’s judgment cast into doubt as a result of the case’s subsequent mootness. We do not erase past precedents just because those cases cease to be live, litigated matters. Every federal case fades to black at some point, yet in our common-law system of case-by-case