24
Opinion of the Court
Nor has the post-Munsingwear practice been as uniform as petitioner claims. See, e. g., Allen & Co. v. Pacific Dunlop Holdings, Inc., 510 U. S. 1160 (1994); Minnesota Newspaper Assn., Inc. v. Postmaster General, 488 U. S. 998 (1989); St. Luke's Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals v. Presbyterian/St. Lukes Medical Center, 459 U. S. 1025 (1982).2 Of course all of those decisions, both granting vacatur and denying it, were per curiam, with the single exception of Karcher v. May, supra, in which we declined to vacate. This seems to us a prime occasion for invoking our customary refusal to be bound by dicta, e. g., McCray v. Illinois, 386 U. S. 300, 312, n. 11 (1967), and our customary skepticism toward per curiam dispositions that lack the reasoned consideration of a full opinion, see Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 670-671 (1974). Today we examine vacatur once more in the light shed by adversary presentation.
The principles that have always been implicit in our treatment of moot cases counsel against extending Munsingwear to settlement. From the beginning we have disposed of moot cases in the manner " 'most consonant to justice' . . . in view of the nature and character of the conditions which have caused the case to become moot." United States v. Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien Gesellschaft, 239 U. S. 466, 477-478 (1916) (quoting South Spring Hill Gold Mining Co. v. Amador Medean Gold Mining Co., 145 U. S. 300, 302 (1892)). The principal condition to which we have looked is whether the party seeking relief from the judgment below caused the mootness by voluntary action. See Hamburg-Amerikanische, supra, at 478 (remanding a moot case for dismissal because "the ends of justice exact
2 The Solicitor General, who has filed an amicus brief in support of petitioner, would apparently distinguish these unvacated cases on the ground that the dismissal was pursuant to this Court's Rule 46.1 (or its predecessor), which provides for dismissal when "all parties . . . agre[e]." But such an exception to vacatur for mootness is not mentioned in Munsingwear; nor, we may add, do we see any reason of policy to commend it.
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