Page:Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer.pdf/19

Rh It is, of course, impossible to catalog all of the potential circumstances that might justify vacatur of a lower court’s judgment on fairness grounds, so I will not attempt to do so here. As a general matter, I believe that a party who claims equitable entitlement to vacatur must explain what harm—other than having to accept the law as the lower court stated it—flows from the inability to appeal the lower court decision. The procedural history of Munsingwear provides one example of the kind of harm that might warrant vacatur. See. Another stems from the fact that courts “must also take account of the public interest” when making a vacatur determination, Bancorp, 513 U. S., at 26, which raises broader fairness concerns—such as “the orderly operation of the federal judicial system,” id., at 27. For that reason, I think that the Court’s “sensitiv[ity] to Acheson’s concern about litigants manipulating the jurisdiction of this Court,”, could be a relevant vacatur consideration, and is likewise reflected in our prior observation that it would be “strange” to “permit a plaintiff to obtain a favorable judgment, take voluntary action that moots the dispute, and then retain the benefit of the judgment.” Garza, 584 U. S., at 729 (internal quotation marks omitted).

It suffices for now to say that “[f]lexibility rather than rigidity has distinguished” a court’s equitable power and the potential reasons for exercising it. Hecht, 321 U. S., at 329. Still, it bears repeating that the reason for a vacatur remedy must be more than “mere disagreement with the decision that one seeks to have vacated.” Chapman, 598 U. S., at –––.