Cite as: 514 U. S. 386 (1995)
Breyer, J., dissenting
Little Charles, 26 F. Cas. 979, 982 (No. 15,612) (CC Va. 1818) (Marshall, C. J., Circuit Justice), quoted in Republic Nat. Bank of Miami v. United States, 506 U. S. 80 (1992). The first appeal, as of Day 50, has reached the court of appeals. Thus, conceptually speaking, one should not consider a later filed motion for reconsideration as having "divested" the court of jurisdiction. And, practically speaking, it makes sense to leave the appeal there, permitting the court of appeals to decide it, or to delay it, as circumstances dictate (say, depending upon the extent to which effort and resources already have been expended in prosecuting and deciding the appeal). After all, we have long recognized that courts have inherent power to stay proceedings and "to control the disposition of the causes on its docket with economy of time and effort for itself, for counsel, and for litigants." Landis v. North American Co., 299 U. S. 248, 254 (1936); cf. 28 U. S. C. § 1367(c)(3) (1988 ed., Supp. V) (providing that district court may, but need not, decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over a claim when it has dismissed all claims over which it has original jurisdiction).
The precedential problem, in the majority's view, arises out of Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co., 459 U. S. 56 (1982) (per curiam), a court/court case in which this Court held that the filing of a reconsideration motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59 caused an earlier filed notice of appeal to " 'self-destruc[t],' " 459 U. S., at 61, despite the fact that the earlier-filed notice had "vested" the Court of Appeals with "jurisdiction." Were the same principle to apply in the agency/court context, then the reconsideration motion filed on Day 70 would cause the earlier filed petition for review, filed on Day 50, to "self-destruct," leaving nothing for the court of appeals to consolidate with an eventual appeal from an agency denial of a reconsideration motion (on Day 100).
Griggs, however, does not apply in the agency/court context. This Court explicitly rested its decision in Griggs upon the fact that a specific Federal Rule of Appellate Proce-
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