Cite as: 516 U. S. 163 (1996)
Scalia, J., dissenting
raising similar issues." Ante, at 167 (internal quotation marks omitted). I do not see how it can promote equal treatment to announce a practice that we cannot possibly pursue in every case. If we were to plumb the "equities" and ponder the "errors" for all the petitions that come before us—if we were to conduct, for example, in all cases involving summary decisions, today's balancing of the "burden" to the Court of Appeals against the litigant's "interests" in having clarification of the ruling, see Stutson, post, at 196, or today's calculation of "the overall probabilities and equities," ante, at 173—we would have no time left for the cases we grant to consider on the merits. Of course we do not purport to conduct such inquiries, not even the basic one of whether the decision below is probably in "error"—which is why we insist that our denial of certiorari does not suggest a view on the merits, see, e. g., Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 296 (1989); Singleton v. Commissioner, 439 U. S. 942 (1978) (Stevens, J., respecting denial of petition for writ of certiorari). Moreover, even if we tried applying the Court's "totality-of-the-circumstances" evaluation to all the petitions coming before us, we would be unlikely to achieve equal treatment. Such a plastic criterion is liable to produce inconsistent results in any series of decisions; it is virtually guaranteed to do so in a series of decisions made without benefit of adversary presentation (whether we should GVR is rarely briefed, much less argued—as it has not been here) and announced without accompaniment of a judicial opinion (we almost never give reasons as the Court has done today). The need to afford equal treatment argues precisely against the "totality-of-the-circumstances" approach embraced by the Court, and in favor of a more modest but standardized GVR practice.
Henceforth, I shall vote for an order granting certiorari, vacating the judgment below without determination of the merits, and remanding for further consideration, only (1) where an intervening factor has arisen that has a legal bear-
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