On Vacation

Charles A. Sullivan created a great law review article title: On Vacation, 43 Hous. L. Rev. 1143 (2006).

It is, of course, about cases being vacated, not about the pleasures of being on vacation.

Because I am, admittedly, pretty lazy, I have always given short shrift to vacated opinions. They have, after all, been “vacated,” which the Oxford English Dictionary reports means “[a]nnulled, made legally void.” Recently, however, I realized that vacated opinions have begun to play an increasingly significant role in the development of the law, a role that remains largely unappreciated and completely unexamined. Contrary to Gertrude Stein, there may be a there there after all.

Id. at 1144 (footnotes omitted).

Photo credit Washington State Parks.