Cite as: 518 U. S. 81 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
tencing Commission (Mar. 29, 1996). "To ignore the district court's special competence—about the 'ordinariness' or 'unusualness' of a particular case—would risk depriving the Sentencing Commission of an important source of information, namely, the reactions of the trial judge to the fact-specific circumstances of the case. . . ." Rivera, 994 F. 2d, at 951.
Considerations like these persuaded us to adopt the abuse-of-discretion standard in Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U. S. 384 (1990), which involved review of a District Court's imposition of Rule 11 sanctions, and in Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U. S. 552 (1988), which involved review of a District Court's determination under the Equal Access to Justice Act, 28 U. S. C. § 2412(d), that the position of the United States was "substantially justified," thereby precluding an award of attorney's fees against the Government. There, as here, we noted that deference was owed to the " 'judicial actor . . . better positioned than another to decide the issue in question.' " Pierce, supra, at 559-560 (quoting Miller v. Fenton, 474 U. S. 104, 114 (1985)); Cooter & Gell, supra, at 403. Furthermore, we adopted deferential review to afford "the district court the necessary flexibility to resolve questions involving 'multifarious, fleeting, special, narrow facts that utterly resist generalization.' " 496 U. S., at 404 (quoting Pierce, supra, at 561-562). Like the questions involved in those cases, a district court's departure decision involves "the consideration of unique factors that are 'little susceptible . . . of useful generalization,' " 496 U. S., at 404, and as a consequence, de novo review is "unlikely to establish clear guidelines for lower courts," id., at 405.
The Government seeks to avoid the factual nature of the departure inquiry by describing it at a higher level of generality linked closely to questions of law. The relevant question, however, is not, as the Government says, "whether a particular factor is within the 'heartland' " as a general proposition, Brief for United States 28, but whether the particu-
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