32
Per Curiam
therein.' " Yee v. Escondido, 503 U. S. 519, 537 (1992). Thus, in Yee, we concluded that the question whether an ordinance effected a physical taking did not include the related question of whether it effected a regulatory taking. Ibid. Whether petitioner should have been granted leave to intervene below is quite distinct, both analytically and factually, from the question whether the Court of Appeals should vacate judgments where the parties have so stipulated. The questions are even less related or complementary to one another than were the questions in Yee.
The intervention question being neither presented as a question in the petition for certiorari nor fairly included therein, "Rule 14.1(a) accordingly creates a heavy presumption against our consideration" of that issue. Ibid. Rule 14.1(a), of course, is prudential; it "does not limit our power to decide important questions not raised by the parties." Blonder-Tongue Laboratories, Inc. v. University of Ill. Foundation, 402 U. S. 313, 320, n. 6 (1971). A prudential rule, however, is more than a precatory admonition. As we have stated on numerous occasions, we will disregard Rule 14.1(a) and consider issues not raised in the petition " 'only in the most exceptional cases.' " Yee, supra, at 535 (quoting Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 481, n. 15 (1976)); see also Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U. S. 420, 443, n. 38 (1984) ("Absent unusual circumstances, . . . we are chary of considering issues not presented in petitions for certiorari").6
6 Even before the first version of the current Rule 14.1(a) was adopted, we indicated our unwillingness to decide issues not presented in petitions for certiorari. As we stated in General Talking Pictures Corp. v. Western Electric Co., 304 U. S. 175, 179 (1938): "One having obtained a writ of certiorari to review specified questions is not entitled here to obtain decision on any other issue." And as Justice Jackson stated, writing for a plurality in Irvine v. California, 347 U. S. 128, 129-130 (1954): "We disapprove the practice of smuggling additional questions into a case after we grant certiorari. The issues here are fixed by the petition unless we limit the grant, as frequently we do to avoid settled, frivolous or state law questions."
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