Cite as: 516 U. S. 163 (1996)
Scalia, J., dissenting
course, in an individual case involving a particular statute, as do most questions of law. But the issue itself is thoroughly generalizable, and of general importance. In any event, I do not urge that we determine the deference issue on the merits; my vote in these cases is to deny the petitions. Finally, I must remark upon the Court's assertion that we issued "just such a GVR order last Term, without recorded dissent," ante, at 173, citing Schmidt v. Espy, 513 U. S. 801 (1994): It is not customary, but quite rare, to record dissents from grants of certiorari, including GVR's. It would be wrong to conclude from the unsigned order in Schmidt that the vote to GVR was unanimous, or even close to unanimous. Thus, Schmidt does not demonstrate that bait-and-switch-deference GVR's are an accepted practice; but the fact that Schmidt was apparently the first-ever such GVR, combined with the fact that the Government is back one Term later for another helping, demonstrates the accuracy of my prediction that the Solicitor General will be quick to take advantage of this new indulgence.
What is more momentous than the Court's judgments in the particular cases before us—each of which extends our prior practice just a little bit—is its expansive expression of the authority that supports those judgments. It acknowledges, to begin with, no constitutional limitation on our power to vacate lower court orders properly brought before us. Ante, at 166. This presumably means that the constitutional grant of "appellate Jurisdiction" over "Cases . . . arising under [the] Constitution [and] Laws of the United States," Art. III, § 2, empowers the Court to vacate a state supreme court judgment, and remand the case, because it finds the opinion, though arguably correct, incomplete and unworkmanlike; or because it observes that there has been a postjudgment change in the personnel of the state supreme court, and wishes to give the new state justices a shot at the case. I think that is not so. When the Constitution divides our jurisdiction into "original Jurisdiction" and "appellate
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