Task: songer_numappel

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Your specific task is to determine the total number of appellants in the case. If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge HARRY T. EDWARDS.
HARRY T. EDWARDS, Circuit Judge:
The appellants, a group of electrical and mechanical engineers employed by an electric utility company, seek attorneys’ fees from the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “Board”) for legal expenses incurred in the course of their ultimately successful quest for a separate representation election. The appellants rely on section 204(a) of the Equal Access to Justice Act (“EAJA” or “the Act”), 28 U.S.C. § 2412 (Supp. V 1981), which provides, inter alia, that, in a suit brought by or against the United States, the court shall award attorneys’ fees to a private prevailing party who satisfies certain financial eligibility requirements, unless “the position of the United States was substantially justified or... special circumstances make an award unjust.” The District Court, 548 F.Supp. 256, found that the appellants met the eligibility requirements and had “prevailed” within the meaning of the Act. The court denied their application for attorneys’ fees, however, on the ground that the position taken by the Board was substantially justified. The appellants contest the latter ruling.
Resolution of this appeal necessitates an inquiry into the theory and practice of the EAJA. We begin by construing two crucial, ambiguous phrases used in the Act— “the position of the United States” and “substantially justified.” Next, we consider the standard of review by which a court of appeals should scrutinize a trial judge’s determination of a party’s entitlement to fees. We then bring our analysis to bear on the District Court’s judgment in the case before us. We conclude that the court’s findings and rulings were proper and accordingly affirm.
I. Background
In 1938, the Utah Power and Light Company (“the Company”) voluntarily recognized Local 57 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (“the Union”) as the exclusive bargaining representative of its employees. The Company and Union agreed that the bargaining unit would consist of all employees except management personnel and supervisory officials with the authority to hire and fire. Included in the unit, consequently, were non-supervisory engineers. The NLRB assented to the parties’ “stipulation” and certified the Union.
By 1978, there were 2,600 employees in the bargaining unit, approximately 100 of whom were highly educated electrical or mechanical engineers. During that year, 72 of the engineers filed a petition with the Board, seeking decertification of the Union as their bargaining representative. In support of their request, they argued that, as professional employees, section 9(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (as amended) guaranteed them a right to vote as a separate group regarding union representation. Regional Director Francis Spearandeo dismissed the engineers’ petition, on the ground that “[t]he Board’s established policy and general rule is that the unit appropriate in a decertification election must be coextensive with the unit previously certified or the unit recognized.” The Board denied the engineers’ petition for review of the dismissal.
In 1979, the engineers amended their petition to request clarification of the scope of the bargaining unit. The Regional Director dismissed this petition as well, on the ground that the engineers constituted neither a labor organization nor an employer and therefore lacked standing under the Board’s regulations to petition for unit clarification.
Having failed to secure relief from the NLRB, the engineers sought the aid of the judiciary. In September 1979, they brought suit in the District Court for the District of 'Columbia against both Spearandeo and the Board. They requested a declaration that they were indeed “professionals” within the meaning of section 2(12) of the National Labor Relations Act and an injunction compelling the Board to provide them a separate representation election. The Board admitted most of the factual allegations in the complaint, but responded that the engineers nevertheless had failed to state a claim on which relief could be granted and that the District Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the controversy. The parties then filed cross-motions for summary judgment.
In 1980, while the case was pending in the District Court, two of the engineers filed a second decertification petition with the Board. This time the Board acceded to the petitioners’ request. Utah Power & Light Co., 258 N.L.R.B. 1059 (1981). The Board reasoned that the situation was “unique” insofar as “the professional employees seeking decertification have never had an opportunity to vote in a self-determination election”; under these special circumstances, it decided, “the policies inherent in Section 9(b)(1)” warranted making an “exception” to the general rule (which it reaffirmed) that a decertification election will not “normally” be ordered “in a unit not coextensive with the existing unit.” Id. at 1061 (footnote omitted).
The long-sought-after election was held on October 29, 1981, and the engineers voted overwhelmingly against continued representation by the Union. Eight days later, the Board moved to dismiss as moot the engineers’ complaint. The engineers did not contest the motion, responding instead with an application for costs and attorneys’ fees under the EAJA. The Board filed a memorandum opposing the application.
On May 28, 1982, the District Court granted the Board’s motion to dismiss. Finding that the engineers qualified as “prevailing parties,” the court granted their motion for costs. The court ruled, however, that the engineers were not entitled to attorneys’ fees under either of the two arguably relevant provisions of the EAJA: first, since the engineers had not shown that the Board had acted in “bad faith,” they were not entitled to an award of fees under section 2412(b); second, since the Board had sustained its burden of showing that its position was “substantially justified,” appellants were precluded from receiving an award of fees under section 2412(d)(1)(A).
On appeal, no party contests the dismissal of the suit itself, the finding that the engineers constituted “prevailing parties,” or the allocation of costs. The engineers challenge the denial of attorneys’ fees.
II. The Equal Access to Justice Act
A. Introduction
The background against which the Equal Access to Justice Act must be viewed is the so-called “American Rule” pertaining to the allocation of costs of counsel. Under that longstanding doctrine, each litigant ordinarily must pay his own lawyer. Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 247, 95 S.Ct. 1612, 1616, 44 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975). The rule has only two narrow exceptions: when a loser “has acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons,” he may be obliged to reimburse the winner for his attorneys’ fees, F.D. Rich Co. v. United States, 417 U.S. 116,129,94 S.Ct. 2157,2165,40 L.Ed.2d 703 (1974) (dicta); accord Lipsig v. National Student Marketing Corp., 663 F.2d 178, 180 (D.C.Cir.1980) (per curiam); and, when an individual litigant, by successfully maintaining a suit, has conferred a benefit on a group of persons, the court may allow him to recover his attorneys’ fees from the beneficiaries, Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U.S. 375, 392-97, 90 S.Ct. 616, 625-28, 24 L.Ed.2d 593 (1970). Traditionally, the United States was even less vulnerable to an award of attorneys’ fees than a private litigant; in the absence of an express statutory provision, even the aforementioned “bad faith” and “common benefit” rules could not be invoked against the federal government. Pealo v. Farmers Home Administration of the United States Department of Agriculture, 562 F.2d 744,748 (D.C. Cir.1977) (alternative holding); Rhode Island Committee on Energy v. General Services Administration, 561 F.2d 397, 405 (1st Cir.1977). The protection from liability for attorneys’ fees enjoyed by the United States under these circumstances derived from two sources: the general doctrine of sovereign immunity; and 28 U.S.C. § 2412, which, prior to its amendment by the EAJA, was “consistently construed as immunizing the United States against attorney’s fees awards absent clear or express statutory authority to the contrary.” NAACP v. Civiletti, 609 F.2d 514, 516 (D.C. Cir.1979), cert. denied, 447 U.S. 922, 100 S.Ct. 3012, 65 L.Ed.2d 1114 (1980).
Since at least the 1920s, the restrictive American doctrine pertaining to the allocation of attorneys’ fees has been subjected to persistent attack. In the 1960s and early 1970s, federal courts sensitive to these criticisms began to experiment with various alternative, more liberal, fee-shifting rules. The most important of these developments was the so-called “private attorney general” theory, under which prevailing parties were allowed to recover attorneys’ fees when their suits resulted in enforcement of “important societal rights.” In 1975, in the Alyeska case, the Supreme Court called a halt to this judicially managed doctrinal innovation. The Court concluded that, in view of the importance and complexity of the field and of the history of legislative involvement, “it is apparent that the circumstances under which attorneys’ fees are to be awarded and the range of discretion of the courts in making those awards are matters for Congress to determine.” 421 U.S. at 262, 95 S.Ct. at 1624 (footnote omitted). Consequently, it held that, in the absence of specific statutory authorization, federal courts sitting in non-diversity cases could award attorneys’ fees to prevailing parties only under the established common law exceptions to the American Rule. Id. at 247, 257-60, 271, 95 S.Ct. at 1616, 1621-23, 1628.
The Supreme Court’s message was not lost on the legislature. A year after the Alyeska decision, Congress passed the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act, which allows prevailing parties in suits brought under specified civil rights statutes to recover “a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs.” The Equal Access to Justice Act, passed four years later, constitutes an even more comprehensive response to the Supreme Court’s invitation and self-abnegation. The Act applies to all civil actions brought by or against the United States and allows private prevailing parties to recover attorneys’ fees from the government in a wide variety of circumstances.
Two provisions of the statute are crucial in the present case. Section 2412(b) authorizes courts to award private prevailing parties “reasonable fees and expenses of attorneys,” except when such awards are “expressly prohibited by statute,” and declares that “[t]he United States shall be liable for such fees and expenses to the same extent that any other party would be liable under the common law or under the terms of any statute which specifically provides for such an award.” The most important effect of this provision is to codify and make applicable to the government the “bad faith” and “common benefit” exceptions to the American Rule.
Section 2412(d)(1)(A) is more sweeping. It provides that a court “shall” award an eligible private prevailing party attorneys’ fees and other litigation expenses unless some other statute specifically provides otherwise or “the court finds that the position of the United States was substantially justified or that special circumstances make an award unjust.” Ordinary tort suits are excluded from the coverage of the provision, but the legislative history makes clear that constitutional tort actions come within its purview. Section 2412(d) is avowedly experimental. Unlike section 2412(b), it contains a “sunset” provision; unless reenacted before October 1, 1984, it will be automatically repealed.
Because of the large bodies of case law defining the contours of the two traditional exceptions to the American Rule, interpretation and application of section 2412(b) usually is relatively straightforward. Section 2412(d)(1)(A), unfortunately, is much more difficult to apply. It is not grounded in any body of common law doctrine. Because of its recent vintage, it has not yet acquired a discernible gloss of judicial interpretation. And, most importantly, several of its crucial terms are distressingly ambiguous. For reasons that will become apparent, two of those terms — “the position of the United States ” and “substantially justified” — loom large in the case before us. Before proceeding, therefore, we must bring those phrases into sharper focus. And, of course, we must strive to lend them shapes that will make them meaningful vehicles, not only for disposing of the case at hand, but for resolving other controversies that come within the broad coverage of the provision.
B. “The Position of the United States”
The statute permits the government, when it loses a case, to avoid liability for attorneys’ fees if it can show that its “position” was substantially justified. The government’s “position,” for these purposes, might mean one of two things. First, the term could refer to the governmental action that precipitated the lawsuit. Second, it could refer to the posture assumed by the government in litigation. These two interpretations have come to be known, respectively, as the “underlying action ” and the “litigation position ” theories.
The judiciary has yet to settle on one or another construction. As of the end of March of 1983, the issue had been addressed (explicitly or implicitly) in twenty-two decisions. In twelve of those cases, the court opted for the “underlying action” theory. In the other ten, the court opted for the “litigation position” theory. This circuit has not yet been confronted with the issue. The case law, in sum, affords us little aid in attempting to construe “the position of the United States.” We are obliged, therefore, to conduct our own inquiry.
1. Legislative Intent
The statute itself contains no clear indication of which of the readings is correct. Section 2412(d)(1)(A) does not explicate the term. And section 2412(d)(2), the definitional provision, makes no reference to “the position of the United States.”
Only two provisions of the Act offer any guidance, and they point in inconsistent directions. First, section 2412(d)(2)(C) indicates that the term “‘United States’ includes any agency and any official of the United States acting in his or her official capacity.” As the Third Circuit observed in a recent case, this encompassing definition provides some support for the “underlying action” theory, both because of its use of the word “acting” and because of the fact that most of the “officials” referred to by the provision would be incapable of taking a position in litigation. Natural Resources Defense Council v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 703 F.2d 700, 707 (3d Cir.1983). However, the support that this definitional provision lends to the “underlying action” theory is at best modest. As Judge Hunter pointed out in his dissent in NRDC, the definitional section might plausibly be read as nothing more than an acknowledgment of the fact “that the government as an entity can only take a ‘position,’ whatever the meaning of that term, through its agencies and the individuals who administer its agencies.” Id. at 718 n. 2. Second, section 2412(d)(3) directs a court, when reviewing adversary adjudications before administrative agencies, to award to a private party who prevails on appeal the attorneys’ fees he incurred in the course of his litigation before the agency, unless the court finds “that during such adversary adjudication the position of the United States was substantially justified, or that special circumstances make an award unjust.” As the highlighted language indicates, the provision presumes that the government’s “position,” for the purpose of assessing its liability for attorneys’ fees resulting from administrative adjudication, is the stance it adopted in litigation before the agency. It remains possible, of course, that the phrase “position of the United States” was intended to have a different meaning when used in the context of litigation before the courts, but if Congress contemplated such a difference, it failed to indicate as much in the statute. In short, the unequivocal adoption of the “litigation position” theory in section 2412(d)(3) suggests that the identical phrase, when used without qualification in section 2412(d)(1)(A), should be interpreted as the posture adopted by the government before the court.
On balance, we think that the support lent the “litigation position” theory by section 2412(d)(3) is somewhat stronger than that lent the “underlying action” theory by the definitional provision in section 2412(d)(2)(C). We concede, however, that the scales do not tip decisively one way or the other. One would hope that the legislative history would make possible a clean resolution of this issue. Unfortunately, study of relevant statements made by proponents and opponents of the bill proves even more inconclusive.
Neither the committee reports nor the debates contain an explicit statement purporting to construe “the position of the United States.” The legislative history is, however, rife with arguments that take for granted one or the other option. Unfortunately, the number that seem founded on the “underlying action” theory is roughly the same as the number that seem founded on the “litigation position” theory. Those various references have been canvassed elsewhere; for present purposes, it will suffice to note the most important.
Strong support for the “litigation position” theory is provided by the language used in both committee reports to describe the standard of liability under section 2412(d)(1)(A): “Where the Government can show that its case had a reasonable basis both in law and fact, no award [of attorneys’ fees] will be made.” H.R.Rep. No. 1418, supra note 20, at 10; S.Rep. No. 253, supra note 20, at 6 (emphasis added) U.S. Code Cong. & Admin.News 1980, at 4989. Other statements, also appearing in both reports, suggest (at least when read in isolation) that Congress was exclusively concerned with irresponsible governmental decisions to: initiate or continue litigation:
A court should look closely at cases... where there has been a judgment on the pleadings or where there is a directed verdict or where a prior suit on the same claim had been dismissed. Such cases clearly raise the possibility that the Government was unreasonable in pursuing the litigation.
The standard, however, should not be read to raise a presumption that the Government position was not substantially justified, simply because it lost the case. Nor, in fact, does the standard require the Government to establish that its decision to litigate was based on a substantial probability of prevailing.
H.R.Rep. No. 1418, supra note 20, at 11; S.Rep. No. 253, supra note 20, at 6-7 (emphasis added) U.S.Code Cong. & Admin. News 1980, at 4989.
One can find equally evocative statements, however, supportive of the “underlying action” theory. For example, in defending the decision to place on the government the burden of demonstrating that its position was substantially justified, both committee reports argue that “it is far easier for the Government, which has control of the evidence, to prove the reasonableness of its action than it is for a private party to marshal the facts to prove that the Government was unreasonable.” H.R.Rep. No. 1418, supra note 20, at 11; S.Rep. No. 253, supra note 20, at 6 (emphasis added), U.S. Code Cong. & Admin.News 1980, at 4989. The conclusions to both reports declare: “Thus, by allowing an award of reasonable fees and expenses against the Government when its action is not substantially justified, S. 265 provides individuals an effective legal or administrative remedy where none now exists.” H.R.Rep. No. 1418, supra note 20, at 12; S.Rep. No. 253, supra note 20, at 7 (emphasis added), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin. News 1980, at 4991. And, in the floor debates, both supporters and critics of the bill frequently manifested their assumption that liability for fees would turn upon the strength of the government’s justification for its regulatory behavior, rather than the colorability of the legal arguments subsequently advanced in support of that conduct.
We have thus arrived at an impasse; we must acknowledge that Congress failed clearly to resolve the question before us. To answer it, consequently, we must enlarge our field of vision; we must try to discern the underlying purposes of the Act as a whole, and then determine which of the two possible definitions of “the position of the United States” would best serve those ends.
2. A Practicable Definition
The central objective of the EAJA, and of section 2412(d)(1)(A) in particular, was to encourage relatively impecunious private parties to challenge unreasonable or oppressive governmental behavior by relieving such parties of the fear of incurring large litigation expenses. Achievement of that end, it was believed, would promote three more general goals. First, Congress hoped to provide relief to the victims of abusive governmental conduct, to enable them to vindicate their rights without assuming enormous financial burdens. Second, it sought to reduce the incidence of such abuse; it anticipated that the prospect of paying sizeable awards of attorneys’ fees when they overstepped their authority and were challenged in court would induce administrators to behave more responsibly in the future. Third, by exposing, a greater number of governmental actions to adversarial testing, Congress hoped to refine the administration of federal law — to foster greater precision, efficiency and fairness in the interpretation of statutes and in the formulation and enforcement of governmental regulations.
Single-minded pursuit of the foregoing goals would have induced Congress to enact a law providing for the automatic award of attorneys’ fees to private parties who prevailed in suits against the government. Congress did not go that far, however, because of its sensitivity to two other considerations. First, it did not wish to inhibit legitimate efforts by the executive to enforce the law. Second, it feared the potentially huge cost to the government of an automatic fee-shifting provision. Accordingly, it selected an intermediate rule. In the words of the committee reports:
Under S. 265, fees will be awarded unless the Government can show that its action was substantially justified or that special circumstances make an award unjust. This standard balances the constitutional obligation of the executive branch to see that the laws are faithfully executed against the public interest in encouraging parties to vindicate their rights.
H.R.Rep. No. 1418, supra note 20, at 10; S.Rep. No. 253, supra note 20, at 6, U.S. Code Cong. & Admin.News 1980, at 4989.
Which of the two possible interpretations of “the position of the United States” would comport better with the foregoing complex of concerns? To answer that question, we first need to determine when and how it will matter which theory we adopt. Examination of the variety of kinds of controversies covered by the Act reveals that, in the large majority of contexts, it makes no functional difference how one conceives of the government’s “position.” In actions brought by the United States, the governmental action that precipitates the controversy almost invariably is its litigation position. Most suits brought against the United States entail a similar correspondence. In the usual case, the government acts in a particular fashion and then defends its conduct before an administrative agency and/or a court. Under such circumstances, the litigation position of the United States will almost always be that its underlying action was legally justifiable. Only in a minority of cases does it matter whether a court, reviewing a petition for fees brought under the EAJA, looks to the government’s original behavior or to its subsequent legal arguments. Assessment of the competing theories, therefore, must be made with reference to those unusual contexts. Relying on our experience, we believe it not unreasonable to assume that most such cases will take one of five forms:
Example One: Appeals from Agency Actions Under Deferential Standards of Review
The standards by which courts review most kinds of administrative action embody some principle of deference. An agency rulemaking decision, for instance, must be upheld if it contravenes no statutory or constitutional provision, was reached in compliance with pertinent procedural requirements, is supported by substantial evidence, and is not arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2) (1976). A decision by an agency not to institute a rulemaking proceeding is accorded even more deference: if the agency adequately explains the facts and policy concerns it relied upon, and if those facts and concerns have some basis in the record, a court will not overturn its judgment. WWHT, Inc. v. FCC, 656 F.2d 807, 817 (D.C.Cir.1981). To take a more specific example especially germane to the instant case, a decision by the NLRB regarding the appropriate scope of a bargaining unit will not be reversed by a court unless it was “made in excess of [the Board’s] delegated powers and contrary to a specific prohibition in the [National Labor Relations] Act.” See Leedom v. Kyne, 358 U.S. 184, 188, 79 S.Ct. 180, 183, 3 L.Ed.2d 210 (1958); Boire v. Greyhound Corp., 376 U.S. 473, 480-82, 84 S.Ct. 894, 898-99, 11 L.Ed.2d 849 (1964).
When an appellate court, applying one of these deferential standards of review, overturns an agency’s decision, how should the agency’s liability for attorneys’ fees under the EAJA be assessed? Assume, for example, that the promulgation of a novel regulation is held to have been “arbitrary and capricious.” If the ensuing EAJA petition submitted by the prevailing private party were evaluated under the “underlying action” theory, the agency’s liability for fees would turn upon whether its adoption of the rule was “substantially justified.” It is very unlikely that the agency would prevail under such a test; a court that has just concluded that the agency’s action was “arbitrary and capricious” would be hard pressed to rule that its action was nevertheless “substantially justified.” The net effect would be that the EAJA would become, for all practical purposes, an automatic fee-shifting provision in these circumstances. That result seems plainly inconsistent with Congress’ general objective in enacting section 2412(d)(1)(A): to establish an “intermediate” standard for the allocation of attorneys’ fees, one falling somewhere between the English Rule and the current American Rule. More consistent with the purposes of the Act would be a rule whereby a court, when reviewing an EAJA petition arising out of a case of the sort described above, would ask: Was the agency’s litigation position (i.e., its argument on appeal that its promulgation of the regulation was not arbitrary and capricious) substantially justified?
Example Two: Standards of Liability Linked to the Justification for Conduct
The government’s liability, in several kinds of suits, turns upon its ability to offer a reasonable justification for its own or its officials’ behavior. The category that springs most readily to mind are suits brought against the United States under the Eighth Amendment alleging that conditions in federal prisons constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.” Though the standard of liability governing such actions remains somewhat in flux, a crucial element in almost all modern formulations of the test is the absence of a defensible rationale for the conditions at issue. Thus, the Supreme Court recently summarized the governing law as follows:
Today the Eighth Amendment prohibits punishments which, although not physically barbarous, “involve the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain,” or are grossly disproportionate to the severity of the crime. Among “unnecessary and wanton” inflictions of pain are those that are “totally without penological justification.”
Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 346, 101 S.Ct. 2392, 2398, 69 L.Ed.2d 59 (1981) (citations and footnote omitted). Clearly, a prerequisite to a finding of a constitutional violation, under the foregoing standard, is a determination that the prison conditions in question are not “substantially justified.”
The close parallel between the standard of liability, in suits of this sort, and the criterion for the award of attorneys’ fees under the EAJA gives rise to a set of problems similar to those discussed in the preceding example. If, when evaluating an EAJA petition brought by a plaintiff (or class of plaintiffs) who prevailed in a case of the kind just described, the judge focused on the justification for the government’s “underlying action,” he or she would find it virtually impossible to deny the plaintiff(s) attorneys’ fees. The net result would be that the EAJA would again become something approaching an automatic fee-shifting provision for a significant category of cases. As indicated above, this seems not to have been contemplated by the congressmen who enacted the statute. Thus, in this context as well, it seems preferable for the court to attend to the strength of the arguments advanced by the government in support of its denial of liability, rather than to the justification for the behavior itself.
Example Three: Defenses Unrelated to the Merits of the Government’s Behavior
When civil actions are brought against the United States, it is sometimes able to resist on the basis of defenses unrelated to the merits of the underlying actions of its officials. For example, if, as a result of a change in the government’s own position or of unrelated events, the potential for impairment of a plaintiff’s interests has been reduced, the government may be able to argue that the case is moot. Or, if the plaintiff delayed bringing suit, the government may be able to rely on a statute of limitations or the doctrine of laches. Each of these defenses is founded on important policy considerations. For example, the mootness doctrine reduces the likelihood that courts will decide cases unaided by the kind of thorough adversarial scrutiny of the relevant issues that only a genuine controversy between the^ parties can create. Statutes of limitation and the laches doctrine promote repose and encourage aggrieved persons to bring suits while evidence is still fresh and reliable.
The choice between the “underlying action” and “litigation position” theories will significantly affect the government’s willingness to assert viable defenses of this sort. An example might be the situation of a government attorney who must decide whether to contest a moderately stale suit against the United States. Because of the passage of time, he may be able to collect only scant evidence to dispute the plaintiff’s allegations, but he may nevertheless have a colorable (but not “sure-fire”) laches defense. If the governing interpretation of “the position of the United States,” within the meaning of the EAJA, were the government’s “underlying action,” the attorney might well decide not to contest the suit (i.e., not to assert the laches argument). He would realize that, if he did not prevail, the government would automatically be liable, not only for the value of the claim, but also for the plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees (because government counsel would be unable, at this late date, to show that the original behavior by the alleged perpetrators of the plaintiff’s harm was substantially justified).
In sum, tying EAJA awards to the strength of the justification for the government’s original action would discourage counsel for the government from asserting defenses unrelated to its officials’ conduct that have a significant chance of prevailing. Such an outcome seems both unfortunate, from a policy standpoint, and inconsistent with Congress’ desire not to chill legitimate efforts by the executive to enforce the law. Thus, here again, it seems more sensible for courts, when reviewing EAJA petitions, to attend to the strength of the legal arguments advanced on behalf of the United States.
Example Four: Supervening Change in the Law
Frequently, during the time in which a suit brought against (or by) the United States is pending, the pertinent legal rules are altered in a manner adverse to the government. The effect of such a change often is that, while the government’s action was “substantially justified” when originally undertaken, persistence in defending that action in court is unjustifiable. In such a situation, if counsel for the United States stubbornly continues litigating the case, compelling the private party to incur attorneys’ fees before eventually prevailing, it seems clear that the objectives underlying the EAJA would be served by shifting those costs to the government. Application of the “underlying action” theory would not have that effect; application of the “litigation position” theory would.
Example Five: Surrender by the Government
Assume that a government contractor believes that the United States has failed to abide by the terms of an agreement (e.g., has misapplied a provision designed to adjust contract prices to accord with inflation). The contractor hires a lawyer who (without consulting the government contracting officer) conducts an investigation and then drafts and files a civil complaint. The government’s attorney, upon receiving the complaint, conducts his own inquiry and concludes that the claim is meritorious. (E.g., he finds that, though the government’s error was inadvertent, it nevertheless constituted a clear violation of the terms of the contract.) The government attorney informs the responsible official of his findings, who pays the plaintiff the money to which he is legally entitled. The plaintiff then brings a second action, under the EAJA, to recover his attorneys’ fees. If the petition is evaluated under the “underlying action” theory, the contractor will prevail. (Even though the government never took a litigation position hostile to the plaintiff, the plaintiff will qualify as a “prevailing party,” and the conduct that gave rise to the suit will fail the “substantial justification” test.) If it is assessed on the basis of the “litigation position” theory, the contractor will lose.
It is not immediately obvious which of the foregoing results is preferable. In favor of the first option, it could be argued that the prospect of being compelled to pay attorneys’ fees in such situations would make government administrators more careful and (perhaps more importantly) would reduce the incidence of less innocent “mistakes.” In favor of the second option, it could be argued that routine payment of attorneys’ fees under these circumstances would only foster collusion between lawyers and putative victims of governmental errors and would result in unnecessary expenditures of public funds. Most such disputes can be resolved quickly and easily through informal discussion between the aggrieved party and the responsible government official. Awarding attorneys’ fees to private parties who, instead of availing themselves of such avenues of relief, file civil complaints would simply result in unnecessary — and unnecessarily costly — formalization of the processes whereby the competing interests of state and citizen are clarified and accommodated. Though the issue is not clear-cut, we think that, on balance, the latter considerations are the more compelling, in view of the purposes of the Act as a whole. Accordingly, the “litigation position” theory seems preferable in this context as well.
To summarize, in each of the five contexts we can imagine in which the definition of “the position of the United States” would make a difference, it seems more sensible and consistent with the purposes of the EAJA to interpret the phrase as the stance taken by the United States in litigation than to

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 2