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Page Number: 19.0

6 

COINBASE, INC. v. BIELSKI 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

One key to this discretionary-stay tradition is its “supple-
ness  of  adaptation  to  varying  conditions.”    Id.,  at  256.  A 
stay “is not a matter of right” and cannot be imposed “re-
flexively.”  Nken,  556  U. S.,  at  427  (internal  quotation
marks omitted). 

That has long been the default rule.  A court’s discretion 
“to grant a stay pending review” is “firmly imbedded in our 
judicial system, consonant with the historic procedures of 
federal appellate courts.”  Ibid. (internal quotation marks
omitted).  It is “a power as old as the judicial system of the 
nation.”  Ibid.  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted);  see  28
U. S. C. §1651(a) (All Writs Act, originally enacted in 1789, 
1 Stat. 81–82).   

Significantly  for  present  purposes,  discretionary  stays
are the default for interlocutory appeals in particular—and
this dates back to the first federal interlocutory-appeal stat-
ute in 1891.  Judiciary Act of 1891, §7, 26 Stat. 828; see 15A 
C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Pro-
cedure §3906, p. 346 (3d ed. 2022).  There, Congress estab-
lished that “proceedings . . . in the court below shall not be 
stayed  unless  otherwise  ordered  by  that  court  during  the 
pendency  of  such  appeal.”  §7,  26  Stat.  828  (emphasis 
added).

That  statute  cemented  a  background  discretionary-stay
rule that governed even where Congress was silent—as this
Court  has  repeatedly  recognized.    Shortly  after  the  1891
Act, a case arose under conditions in which the Act was si-
lent  about  whether  a  stay  should  issue.    In  re  Haberman 
Mfg. Co., 147 U. S. 525, 530 (1893) (finding “no express pro-
vision” on point).  This Court applied the background rule:
“[T]he Circuit Court had a discretion to grant or refuse” a 
stay.  Ibid.    Another  case  of  statutory  silence arose  a  few 
years later.  In re McKenzie, 180 U. S. 536, 550–551 (1901). 
Again, this Court reiterated federal courts’ “inherent power 
. . . to stay or supersede proceedings on appeal” from an in-
terlocutory order.  Id., at 551.  As this Court summarized in