176
Opinion of Rehnquist, C. J.
apply the "totality-of-the-circumstances" approach that Justice Scalia finds objectionable. Post, at 191. The Court's wise disposition of these petitions falls squarely within the best traditions of its administration of that docket. I therefore join the Court's opinions.
Chief Justice Rehnquist, concurring in No. 94-9323 and dissenting in No. 94-8988, post, p. 193.
I agree, for the reasons given by Justice Scalia, that the Court is mistaken in vacating the judgment in No. 94-8988, Stutson v. United States, post, p. 193. I also agree with much of the rest of Justice Scalia's dissent, but I do not agree with that portion, post, at 179, dealing with what he describes as "situations calling forth the special deference owed to state law and state courts in our system of federalism." Of the three cases that he cites for this proposition, one, Missouri ex rel. Wabash R. Co. v. Public Serv. Comm'n, 273 U. S. 126 (1927), came to this Court on writ of error and therefore was required to be decided on the merits. The second, State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Duel, 324 U. S. 154 (1945), came to us on appeal from a State Supreme Court, and was thus also required to be decided on the merits. The third, Huddleston v. Dwyer, 322 U. S. 232 (1944), was a case in which certiorari had already been granted, and the case argued on the merits. None of them, then, involved a choice between denying certiorari, on the one hand, and simply vacating the judgment of the lower court without any opinion, on the other. Vacating a judgment without explanation when the alternative is to simply deny certiorari involves at best the correction of perceived error made by the lower courts. In this connection, we would do well to bear in mind the admonition of Chief Justice William Howard Taft, one of the architects of the Certiorari Act of 1925, as described by his biographer:
"It was vital, he said in opening his drive for the Judges' bill, that cases before the Court be reduced without lim-
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