Page:Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer.pdf/20

20 Every lower court loser would, of course, prefer that the lower court’s opinion not exist. But in each and every case in our adversarial justice system, one side loses—and generally must accept that outcome.

To me, such first principles about the nature of the vacatur remedy, the design of our common-law system, and the scope of appellate authority best inform how this Court, and other Courts of Appeals, should proceed when addressing a Munsingwear motion. Mindful that vacatur of a lower court’s judgment is an extraordinary equitable remedy designed to ensure fairness, and fully cognizant of the danger of uprooting presumptively valid legal precedents—contributions to the common law that belong to all who are governed by the rule of law in our constitutional system, not just the parties in the particular case—we should carefully evaluate the purported need for vacatur, in terms of the harms it would avert. And in the absence of any demonstrated harm-related justification for vacating a lower court's opinion, we should conclude that “[t]he ‘public interest’ … is generally better served by leaving appellate judgments intact.” Alvarez v. Smith, 558 U. S. 87, 98 (2009) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

All that said, I am aware that a party who is deprived of the opportunity to appeal due to mootness (like Acheson) might feel that loss acutely. It might even experience the thwarting of its chance to obtain a reversal on appeal as a grave injustice, on par with any other fairness-based justification for vacatur of the lower court’s ruling. I also recognize that this Court has previously expressed sympathy for that view. See, e.g., Camreta v. Greene, 563 U. S. 692, 713 (2011) (suggesting that the inability to challenge “a legally consequential decision” warrants vacatur). But I disagree. There is nothing inherently inequitable about not being able to pursue an appeal.