final decision
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 324 U.S. 229 - Catlin v. United States · 1945Most cited · 5,696 citing opinions
A 'final decision' generally is one which ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.
How often courts cite the case defining “final decision”
Court decisions citing the opinion that defined “final decision” — 5,613 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining case as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.