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The Public Right to Precedent: A Theory and Rejection of Vacatur |
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Daniel Purcell |
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| In an attempt to promote judicial efficiency, federal and state courts have recently begun to permit the discretionary vacatur of judgments. Typically, vacatur occurs when the party who loses at trial offers the winning party a sum of money in exchange for an agreement to vacate the judgment. Once a judgment is vacated, any collateral or preclusive effects the judgment might have had are generally abolished. This Comment identifies the possibility that allowing discretionary vacatur will allow wealthy, repeat-player litigants to shape the law according to their interests by eliminating rules of law that affect their interests adversely. Moreover, the author argues that vacatur strikes at the heart of the law's normative appeal: its public function as a mechanism for resolving disputes without regard to the wealth or power of the parties involved. If the law is to retain its legitimacy, it must continue to fulfill this public function. Accordingly, vacatur should be limited to defective judgments; litigants should not be given control over the system of precedent. | |
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Copyright
© 1997 by California Law Review, Inc. |
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