170
Per Curiam
the two cases is that the recent Supreme Court precedent was briefed to the Court of Appeals in Stutson, but we have never held lower court briefing to bar our review and vacatur where the lower court's order shows no sign of having applied the precedents that were briefed. Compare post, at 185-186 (asserting that "we have no power" to vacate and remand in Stutson after relevant briefing and a summary order below), with, e. g., Netherland v. Tuggle, 515 U. S. 951 (1995) (per curiam) (vacating Court of Appeals' summary order staying execution for probable failure to apply a 12-year-old Supreme Court precedent that the parties briefed to the Court of Appeals; this Court itself granted a stay a week later, applying that precedent, see Tuggle v. Netherland, 515 U. S. 1188 (1995)). As the prevalence of summary dispositions by the Courts of Appeals continues to increase with the burgeoning federal docket—in 1994, over 11% of Court of Appeals decisions on the merits,1 and many more procedural decisions, were summary—such cases will, no doubt, arise more frequently. In this context, it is important that the meaningful exercise of this Court's appellate powers not be precluded by uncertainty as to what the court below "might . . . have relied on." And we are well aware, as are Supreme Court practitioners and lower courts, that while not immune from our plenary review, ambiguous summary dispositions below tend, by their very nature, to lack the precedential significance that we generally look for in deciding whether to exercise our discretion to grant plenary review. We are therefore more ready than the dissent to issue a GVR order in cases in which recent events have cast substantial doubt on the correctness of the lower court's summary disposition.
With regard to confessions of error and other changes of position by litigants, we agree on several points. All Mem-1 See Administrative Office of United States Courts, Reports of Proceedings of Judicial Conference of the United States, 1994, table S-3 (3,080 out of 27,219 decisions on the merits).
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