Opinion of the Court
come by later developments in the litigation. As Ortiz explains, one such ruling is the denial of summary judgment on sufficiency-of-the-evidence grounds. 562 U. S., at 184. Factual challenges depend on, well, the facts, which the parties develop and clarify as the case progresses from summary judgment to a jury verdict. Thus, “[o]nce the case proceeds to trial, the full record developed in court supersedes the record existing at the time of the summary-judgment motion.” Ibid. So after trial, a district court’s assessment of the facts based on the summary-judgment record becomes “ancient history and [is] not subject to appeal.” Empress Casino Joliet Corp. v. Balmoral Racing Club, Inc., 831 F. 3d 815, 823–824 (CA7 2016). Fact-dependent appeals must be appraised in light of the complete trial record.
It follows, Ortiz holds, that a party must raise a sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim in a post-trial motion to preserve it for appeal. 562 U. S., at 191–192. Appellate review, by its nature, requires a lower court decision to review. Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U. S. 868, 895 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (the “very word ‘review’ presupposes that a litigant’s arguments have been raised and considered in the tribunal of first instance”). This is especially important for factual challenges based on the trial record, which “cal[l] for the judgment in the first instance of the judge who saw and heard the witnesses and has the feel of the case which no appellate printed transcript can impart.” Cone v. West Virginia Pulp & Paper Co., 330 U. S. 212, 216 (1947). The filing of a post-trial motion under Rule 50 allows the district court to take first crack at the question that the appellate court will ultimately face: Was there sufficient evidence in the trial record to support the jury’s verdict? Absent such a motion, “an appellate court is ‘powerless’ to review the sufficiency of the evidence after trial.” Ortiz, 562 U. S., at 189 (quoting Unitherm Food Systems, Inc. v. Swift-Eckrich, Inc., 546 U. S. 394, 405 (2006)).
