Supreme Court GVRs and Lower-Court Reactions

We seek to understand the Supreme Court's “Grant, Vacate, and Remand” (GVR) dispositions and the reaction to those dispositions by the U.S. Court of Appeals. Drawing on data from four Court terms, we trace the reaction of the lower courts to GVR orders, culling information about the meaning of the GVR to those lower courts from their responses and from our interviews with several unnamed circuit court judges. We then code the lower-court decisions to systematically detail how circuit courts react to GVRs.