304
Stevens, J., concurring in judgment
Health and Human Services' claims determination and remanded the case to the Social Security Administration (Agency) for reconsideration (a so-called "sentence-four" remand), we held that claimants who are otherwise eligible for attorney's fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), 28 U. S. C. § 2412(d), are entitled to reimbursement for fees incurred on remand. In so holding, it was our understanding, consistent with "prevailing party" jurisprudence in other areas of the law, 490 U. S., at 886-887, that "[n]o fee award at all would have been available to [the claimant] absent successful conclusion of the remand proceedings," id., at 889.
Two Terms later, in Melkonyan v. Sullivan, 501 U. S. 89 (1991), we stated in dicta that in sentence-four remand cases, the 30-day period in which claimants must submit their EAJA fee applications begins to run when the district court issues its remand order. Id., at 101-102. That statement was in obvious tension with the holding of Hudson; for it makes little sense to start the 30-day EAJA clock running before a claimant even knows whether he or she will be a "prevailing party" under EAJA by securing benefits on remand.
The question presented in this case is how best to reconcile this tension in our cases. If we reject the Government's rather bizarre proposal of requiring all Social Security claimants who achieve a sentence-four remand to file a protective EAJA application within 30 days of the remand order, and then update or amend their applications if they are successful on remand, see Brief for Petitioner 26-30, we are left with essentially two alternatives. We can overrule Hudson and endorse Melkonyan's dicta that the 30-day clock under EAJA begins to run once the district court issues a sentence-four remand order. That is the path followed by the majority. Alternatively, we can repudiate the dicta in Melkonyan and reaffirm the understanding of EAJA that we had at the time we decided Hudson: that fees are avail-
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