Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 382

529US1

Unit: $U42

[10-11-01 11:58:08] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 277 (2000)

307

Scalia, J., concurring in judgment

reference to the lower court’s adverse judgment.
It was
careful to note—however illogical that might have been, see
id., at 635—that the parties “remain[ed] adverse,” and that
jurisdiction was proper only so long as the “requisites of a
case or controversy are also met,” id., at 619, 624. Today
the Court would appear to drop even this ﬁg leaf.4
In con-
cluding that the injury to Erie is “sufﬁcient” to keep this
case alive, the Court performs the neat trick of identifying
a “case or controversy” that has only one interested party.

II

For the reasons set forth above, I would dismiss this case
for want of jurisdiction. Because the Court resolves the
threshold mootness question differently and proceeds to ad-
dress the merits, I will do so brieﬂy as well.
I agree that
the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court must be re-
versed, but disagree with the mode of analysis the Court
has applied.

The city of Erie self-consciously modeled its ordinance on
the public nudity statute we upheld against constitutional
challenge in Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U. S. 560 (1991),
calculating (one would have supposed reasonably) that the
courts of Pennsylvania would consider themselves bound by
In
our judgment on a question of federal constitutional law.
Barnes, I voted to uphold the challenged Indiana statute
“not because it survives some lower level of First Amend-
ment scrutiny, but because, as a general law regulating con-
duct and not speciﬁcally directed at expression, it is not

4 I say “appear” because although the Court states categorically that
“the availability of . . . relief [from the judgment below] is sufﬁcient to
prevent the case from being moot,” it follows this statement, in the next
sentence, with the assertion that Pap’s, the state-court plaintiff, retains a
“concrete stake in the outcome of this case.” Ante, at 288. Of course, if
the latter were true a classic case or controversy existed, and resort to
the exotic theory of “standing by virtue of adverse judgment below” was
entirely unnecessary.