Cite as: 516 U. S. 163 (1996)
Per Curiam
e. g., Conner v. Simler, 367 U. S. 486 (1961), new federal statutes, see, e. g., Sioux Tribe of Indians v. United States, 329 U. S. 685 (1946), administrative reinterpretations of federal statutes, see, e. g., Schmidt v. Espy, 513 U. S. 801 (1994), new state statutes, see, e. g., Louisiana v. Hays, 512 U. S. 1230 (1994), changed factual circumstances, see, e. g., NLRB v. Federal Motor Truck Co., 325 U. S. 838 (1945) (demilitarization of employees), and confessions of error or other positions newly taken by the Solicitor General, see, e. g., Wells v. United States, 511 U. S. 1050 (1994); Reed v. United States, 510 U. S. 1188 (1994); Ramirez v. United States, 510 U. S. 1103 (1994); Chappell v. United States, 494 U. S. 1075 (1990); Polsky v. Wetherill, 403 U. S. 916 (1971), and state attorneys general, see, e. g., Cuffle v. Avenenti, 498 U. S. 996 (1990); Nicholson v. Boles, 375 U. S. 25 (1963).
This practice has some virtues. In an appropriate case, a GVR order conserves the scarce resources of this Court that might otherwise be expended on plenary consideration, assists the court below by flagging a particular issue that it does not appear to have fully considered, assists this Court by procuring the benefit of the lower court's insight before we rule on the merits, and alleviates the "[p]otential for unequal treatment" that is inherent in our inability to grant plenary review of all pending cases raising similar issues, see United States v. Johnson, 457 U. S. 537, 556, n. 16 (1982); cf. Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314, 323 (1987) ("[W]e fulfill our judicial responsibility by instructing the lower courts to apply the new rule retroactively to cases not yet final"). Where intervening developments, or recent developments that we have reason to believe the court below did not fully consider, reveal a reasonable probability that the decision below rests upon a premise that the lower court would reject if given the opportunity for further consideration, and where it appears that such a redetermination may determine the ultimate outcome of the litigation, a GVR order is, we believe, potentially appropriate. Whether a GVR order is ulti-
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