336 GRUPO MEXICANO de DESARROLLO, S. A. v.
ALLIANCE BOND FUND, INC. Opinion of Ginsburg, J.
"almost certain" to prevail on the merits. App. to Pet. for Cert. 26a.3
The Court holds the District Court's preliminary freeze order impermissible principally because injunctions of this kind were not "traditionally accorded by courts of equity" at the time the Constitution was adopted. Ante, at 319; see ante, at 333. In my view, the Court relies on an unjustifiably static conception of equity jurisdiction. From the beginning, we have defined the scope of federal equity in relation to the principles of equity existing at the separation of this country from England, see, e. g., Payne v. Hook, 7 Wall. 425, 430 (1869); Gordon v. Washington, 295 U. S. 30, 36 (1935); we have never limited federal equity jurisdiction to the specific practices and remedies of the pre-Revolutionary Chancellor.
Since our earliest cases, we have valued the adaptable character of federal equitable power. See Seymour v. Freer, 8 Wall. 202, 218 (1869) ("[A] court of equity ha[s] unquestionable authority to apply its flexible and comprehensive jurisdiction in such manner as might be necessary to the right administration of justice between the parties."); Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U. S. 321, 329 (1944) ("Flexibility rather than rigidity has distinguished [federal equity jurisdiction]."). We have also recognized that equity must evolve over time, "in order to meet the requirements of every case, and to satisfy the needs of a progressive social condition in which new primary rights and duties are constantly arising and new kinds of wrongs are constantly committed." Union Pacific R. Co. v. Chicago, R. I. & P. R. Co., 163 U. S. 564,
3 We have on three occasions considered the availability of a preliminary injunction to freeze assets pending litigation, see Deckert v. Independence Shares Corp., 311 U. S. 282 (1940); De Beers Consol. Mines, Ltd. v. United States, 325 U. S. 212 (1945); United States v. First Nat. City Bank, 379 U. S. 378 (1965). As the Court recognizes, see ante, at 324-327, these cases involved factual and legal circumstances markedly different from those presented in this case and thus do not rule out or in the provisional remedy at issue here.
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