606
Opinion of the Court
verdict, see Hanrahan, 446 U. S., at 759, or acquired a judicial pronouncement that the defendant has violated the Constitution unaccompanied by "judicial relief," Hewitt, supra, at 760 (emphasis added). Never have we awarded attorney's fees for a nonjudicial "alteration of actual circumstances." Post, at 633 (dissenting opinion). While urging an expansion of our precedents on this front, the dissenters would simultaneously abrogate the "merit" requirement of our prior cases and award attorney's fees where the plaintiff's claim "was at least colorable" and "not . . . groundless." Post, at 627 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). We cannot agree that the term "prevailing party" authorizes federal courts to award attorney's fees to a plaintiff who, by simply filing a nonfrivolous but nonetheless potentially meritless lawsuit (it will never be determined), has reached the "sought-after destination" without obtaining any judicial relief. Post, at 634 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).8
8 Although the dissenters seek support from Mansfield, C. & L. M. R. Co. v. Swan, 111 U. S. 379 (1884), that case involved costs, not attorney's fees. "[B]y the long established practice and universally recognized rule of the common law . . . the prevailing party is entitled to recover a judgment for costs," id., at 387, but "the rule 'has long been that attorney's fees are not ordinarily recoverable,' " Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U. S. 240, 257 (1975) (quoting Fleischmann Distilling Corp. v. Maier Brewing Co., 386 U. S. 714, 717 (1967)). Courts generally, and this Court in particular, then and now, have a presumptive rule for costs which the Court in its discretion may vary. See, e. g., this Court's Rule 43.2 ("If the Court reverses or vacates a judgment, the respondent or appellee shall pay costs unless the Court otherwise orders"). In Mans-field, the defendants had successfully removed the case to federal court, successfully opposed the plaintiffs' motion to remand the case to state court, lost on the merits of the case, and then reversed course and successfully argued in this Court that the lower federal court had no jurisdiction. The Court awarded costs to the plaintiffs, even though they had lost and the defendants won on the jurisdictional issue, which was the only question this Court decided. In no ordinary sense of the word can the plaintiffs have been said to be the prevailing party here—they lost and their opponents won on the only litigated issue—so the Court's use of the term must be regarded as a figurative rather than a literal one, justifying the
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