Cite as: 527 U. S. 308 (1999)
Opinion of Ginsburg, J.
taneous transfer of assets abroad, suggests that defendants may succeed in avoiding meritorious claims in ways unimaginable before the merger of law and equity. See LoPucki, The Death of Liability, 106 Yale L. J. 1, 32-38 (1996). I am not ready to say a responsible Chancellor today would deny Alliance relief on the ground that prior case law is unsupportive.
The development of Mareva injunctions in England after 1975 supports the view of the lower courts in this case, a view to which I adhere. As the Court observes, see ante, at 327-329, preliminary asset-freeze injunctions have been available in English courts since the 1975 Court of Appeal decision in Mareva Compania Naviera S. A. v. International Bulkcarriers S. A., 2 Lloyd's Rep. 509. Although the cases reveal some uncertainty regarding Mareva's jurisdictional basis, the better-reasoned and more recent decisions ground Mareva in equity's traditional power to remedy the "abuse" of legal process by defendants and the "injustice" that would result from defendants "making themselves judgment-proof" by disposing of their assets during the pendency of litigation. Iraqi Ministry of Defence v. Arcepey Shipping Co., 1 All E. R. 480, 484-487 (1979) (citations omitted); see Hetherington, Introduction to the Mareva Injunction, in Mareva Injunctions 1, 10-13, and n. 95, 20 (M. Hetherington ed. 1983) (explaining the doctrinal basis of this jurisdictional theory and citing cases adopting it). That grounding, in my judgment, is secure.
III
A
The Court worries that permitting preliminary injunctions to freeze assets would allow creditors, " 'on a mere statement of belief that the defendant can easily make away with or transport his money or goods, [to] impose an injunction on him, indefinite in duration, disabling him to use so much of his funds or property as the court deems necessary for secu-
339
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