Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/22-210_7mi8.pdf
Page Number: 8.0

6 

DUPREE v. YOUNGER 

Opinion of the Court 

B 
Younger urges us to extend Ortiz’s holding to cover pure
questions  of  law  resolved  in  an  order  denying  summary
judgment.  We decline the invitation. 

While factual issues addressed in summary-judgment de-
nials  are  unreviewable  on  appeal,  the  same is  not  true  of 
purely  legal  issues—that  is,  issues  that  can  be  resolved 
without reference to any disputed facts.  Trials wholly sup-
plant pretrial factual rulings, but they leave pretrial legal
rulings undisturbed.  The point of a trial, after all, is not to 
hash  out  the  law.    Because  a  district  court’s  purely  legal 
conclusions at summary judgment are not “supersede[d]” by 
later developments in the litigation, Ortiz, 562 U. S., at 184, 
these rulings follow the “general rule” and merge into the
final judgment, at which point they are reviewable on ap-
peal, Quackenbush, 517 U. S., at 712. 

That difference explains why a summary-judgment mo-
tion is sufficient to preserve legal but not factual claims.  As 
Ortiz explains, an appellate court’s review of factual chal-
lenges  after  a  trial  is  rooted  in  the  complete  trial  record, 
which means that a district court’s factual rulings based on
the obsolete summary-judgment record are useless.  A dis-
trict court’s resolution of a pure question of law, by contrast,
is unaffected by future developments in the case.  From the 
reviewing court’s perspective, there is no benefit to having 
a  district  court  reexamine  a  purely  legal  issue  after  trial, 
because  nothing  at  trial  will  have given  the  district  court
any reason to question its prior analysis.  We therefore hold 
that  a  post-trial  motion  under  Rule  50  is  not  required  to
preserve for appellate review a purely legal issue resolved 
at summary judgment. 

C 
Younger’s  counterarguments  do  not  persuade  us  other-
wise.  First, he argues that under Ortiz, an order denying
summary  judgment  is  not  a  “final  decision”  under  §1291