OCTOBER TERM, 1994
Syllabus
PLAUT ET AL.
v. SPENDTHRIFT FARM, INC., ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH
CIRCUIT
No.93-1121. Argued November 30, 1994-Decided April 18, 1995
In a 1987 civil action, petitioners alleged that in 1983 and
1984 respondents committed fraud and deceit in the sale of stock in
violation of § lO(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and
Rule lOb-5 of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The District
Court dismissed the action with prejudice following this Court's
decision in
Lamp!, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis &
Petigrow v.
Gilbertson, 501 U. S. 350, 364, which
required that suits such as petitioners' be commenced within one
year after the discovery of the facts constituting the violation
and within three years after such violation. After the judgment
became final, Congress enacted § 27 A(b) of the 1934 Act, which
provides for reinstatement on motion of any action commenced
pre-Lamp! but dismissed thereafter as time barred, if the
action would have been timely filed under applicable
pre-Lamp! state law. Although finding that the statute's
terms required that petitioners' ensuing §27A(b) motion be granted,
the District Court denied the motion on the ground that §27A(b) is
unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals affirmed.
Held: Section 27A(b) contravenes the Constitution's
separation of powers to the extent that it requires federal courts
to reopen final judgments entered before its enactment. Pp.
215-240.
(a) Despite respondents' arguments to the contrary, there is no
reasonable construction on which §27A(b) does not require federal
courts to reopen final judgments in suits dismissed with prejudice
by virtue of
Lampf Pp. 215-217.
(b) Article III establishes a "judicial department" with the
"province and duty ... to say what the law is" in particular cases
and controversies.
Marbury v.
Madison, 1 Cranch 137,
177. The Framers crafted this charter with an expressed
understanding that it gives the Federal Judiciary the power, not
merely to rule on cases, but to
decide them conclusively,
subject to review only by superior courts in the Article III
hierarchy. Thus, the Constitution forbids the Legislature to
interfere with courts' final judgments. Pp. 219-225.
(c) Section 27A(b) effects a clear violation of the foregoing
principle by retroactively commanding the federal courts to reopen
final judgments. This Court's decisions have uniformly provided
fair warning that retroactive legislation such as §27A(b) exceeds
congressional pow-
212
Syllabus
ers. See,
e. g., Chicago &
Southern Air Lines,
Inc. v.
Waterman S. S.
Corp., 333 U. S. 103, 113.
Petitioners are correct that when a new law makes clear that it is
retroactive, an appellate court must apply it in reviewing
judgments still on appeal, and must alter the outcome accordingly.
However, once a judgment has achieved finality in the highest court
in the hierarchy, the decision becomes the last word of the
judicial department with regard to the particular case or
controversy, and Congress may not declare by retroactive
legislation that the law applicable to that case was in fact
something other than it was. It is irrelevant that §27A(b) reopens
(or directs the reopening of) final judgments in a whole class of
cases rather than in a particular suit, and that the final
judgments so reopened rested on the bar of a statute of limitations
rather than on some other ground. Pp. 225-230.
(d) Apart from §27A(b), the Court knows of no instance in which
Congress has attempted to set aside the final judgment of an
Article III court by retroactive legislation. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc.
60(b), 20 U. S. C. § 1415(e)(4), 28 U. S. C. § 2255, 50 U. S. C.
App. § 520(4), and,
e. g., the statutes at issue in
United States v.
Sioux Nation, 448 U. S. 371, 391
392,
Sampeyreac v.
United States, 7 Pet. 222, 238,
Paramino Lumber Co. v.
Marshall, 309 U. S. 370, and
Pennsylvania v.
Wheeling &
Belmont Bridge
Co., 18 How. 421, distinguished. Congress's prolonged reticence
would be amazing if such interference were not understood to be
constitutionally proscribed by the Constitution's separation of
powers. The Court rejects the suggestion that §27A(b) might be
constitutional if it exhibited prospectivity or a greater degree of
general applicability. Pp.230-240.
1 F.3d
1487, affirmed.
SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which
REHNQUIST, C. J., and O'CONNOR, KENNEDY, SOUTER, and THOMAS, JJ.,
joined. BREYER, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment,
post, p. 240. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in
which GINSBURG, J., joined,
post, p. 246.
William W Allen argued the cause for petitioners. With
him on the briefs was
J. Montjoy Trimble.
Michael R. Dreeben argued the cause for the United States urging
reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Days,
Assistant Attorney General Hunger, Deputy Solicitor General
Kneedler, Barbara C. Biddle, Simon M. Lorne, Paul Gonson, and Jacob
H. Stillman.
213
Theodore B. Olson argued the cause for respondents.
With him on the briefs were Larry L. Simms, Theodore
J.
Boutrous, Jr., John K. Bush, D. Jarrett Arp, Barbara B. Edelman,
Barry Friedman, James E. Burns, Jr., Kevin Muck, William E.
Johnson, Robert M. Watt III, Robert S. Miller, and L. Clifford
Craig.*
JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented in this case is whether § 27 A(b) of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934, to the extent that it requires
federal courts to reopen final judgments in private civil actions
under § 10(b) of the Act, contravenes the Constitution's separation
of powers or the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
I
In 1987, petitioners brought a civil action against respondents
in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of
Kentucky. The complaint alleged that in 1983 and 1984 respondents
had committed fraud and deceit in the sale of stock in violation of
§ 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 of
the Securities and Exchange Commission. The case was mired in
pretrial proceedings in the District Court until June 20, 1991,
when we decided
Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis &
Petigrow v.
Gilbertson, 501 U. S.
350. Lampf
held that "[l]itigation instituted pursuant to § 10(b) and Rule
10b-5 ... must be commenced within one year after the discovery of
the facts constituting the violation and within three years after
such violation."
Id., at
*Briefs of
amici curiae urging reversal were filed for
the National Association of Securities and Commercial Law Attorneys
by
James M. Finberg and
Paul J.
Mishkin; for the Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Co. by
Richard G.
Taranto, H. Bartow Farr III, and
Stewart M. Weltman; and for
Michael
Joseph E. Schmitz, Zachary D. Fasman, Judith Richards Hope,
Charles A. Shanor, Daniel
J. Popeo, and Paul D. Kamenar
filed a brief for the Washington Legal Foundation as amicus curiae
urging affirmance.
214
364. We applied that holding to the plaintiff-respondents in
Lampf itself, found their suit untimely, and reinstated a
summary judgment previously entered in favor of the
defendant-petitioners.
Ibid. On the same day we decided
James B. Beam Distilling Co. v.
Georgia, 501 U. S. 529 (1991), in
which a majority of the Court held, albeit in different opinions,
that a new rule of federal law that is applied to the parties in
the case announcing the rule must be applied as well to all cases
pending on direct review. See
Harper v.
Virginia Dept. of
Taxation, 509 U.
S. 86, 92 (1993). The joint effect of
Lampf and
Beam was to mandate application of the 1-year/3-year
limitations period to petitioners' suit. The District Court,
finding that petitioners' claims were untimely under the
Lampf rule, dismissed their action with prejudice on August
13, 1991. Petitioners filed no appeal; the judgment accordingly
became final 30 days later. See 28 U. S. C. § 2107(a) (1988 ed.,
Supp. V);
Griffith v.
Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314, 321, n. 6
(1987).
On December 19, 1991, the President signed the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991, 105 Stat. 2236.
Section 476 of the Act-a section that had nothing to do with FDIC
improvements-became §27A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934,
and was later codified as 15 U. S. C. § 78aa-1 (1988 ed., Supp. V).
It provides:
"(a) Effect on pending causes of action
"The limitation period for any private civil action implied
under section 78j(b) of this title [§ 10(b) of the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934] that was commenced on or before June 19,
1991, shall be the limitation period provided by the laws
applicable in the jurisdiction, including principles of
retroactivity, as such laws existed on June 19, 1991.
"(b) Effect on dismissed causes of action
"Any private civil action implied under section 78j(b) of this
title that was commenced on or before June 19, 1991-
215
"(1) which was dismissed as time barred subsequent to June 19,
1991, and
"(2) which would have been timely filed under the limitation
period provided by the laws applicable in the jurisdiction,
including principles of retroactivity, as such laws existed on June
19, 1991,
"shall be reinstated on motion by the plaintiff not later than
60 days after December 19, 1991."
On February 11, 1992, petitioners returned to the District Court
and filed a motion to reinstate the action previously dismissed
with prejudice. The District Court found that the conditions set
out in §§ 27 A(b)(l) and (2) were met, so that petitioners' motion
was required to be granted by the terms of the statute. It
nonetheless denied the motion, agreeing with respondents that § 27
A(b) is unconstitutional. Memorandum Opinion and Order, Civ. Action
No. 87-438 (ED Ky., Apr. 13, 1992). The United States Court of
Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed.
1 F.3d
1487 (1993). We granted certiorari. 511 U. S. 1141 (1994).1
II
Respondents bravely contend that § 27A(b) does not require
federal courts to reopen final judgments, arguing first that the
reference to "the laws applicable in the jurisdiction ... as such
laws existed on June 19, 1991" (the day before
Lamp! was
decided) may reasonably be construed to refer precisely to the
limitations period provided in
Lamp! itself, in which case
petitioners' action was time barred even under
1 Last Term this Court affirmed, by an equally divided vote, a
judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit that held §27A(b) constitutional.
Morgan Stanley
&
Co. v.
Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co., 511 U. S. 658 (1994)
(per curiam). That ruling of course lacks precedential
weight.
Trans World Airlines, Inc. v.
Hardison,
432 U. S. 63,73,
n. 8 (1977).
216
§ 27A.2 It is true that "[a] judicial construction of a statute
is an authoritative statement of what the statute meant before as
well as after the decision of the case giving rise to that
construction."
Rivers v.
Roadway Express, Inc.,
511 U. S. 298,
312-313 (1994); see also
id., at 313, n. 12. But
respondents' argument confuses the question of what the law
in
fact was on June 19, 1991, with the distinct question of what §
27 A
means by its
reference to what the law was. We
think it entirely clear that it does not mean the law enunciated in
Lampf, for two independent reasons. First,
Lampf
provides a uniform, national statute of limitations (instead of
using the applicable state limitations period, as lower federal
courts had previously done. See
Lampf, 501 U. S., at 354,
and n. 1). If the statute referred to
that law, its
reference to the "laws applicable
in the jurisdiction"
(emphasis added) would be quite inexplicable. Second, if the
statute refers to the law enunciated in
Lampf, it is utterly
without effect, a result to be avoided if possible.
American
Nat. Red Cross v. S.
G., 505 U. S. 247, 263-264
(1992); see 2A N. Singer, Sutherland on Statutory Construction §
46.06 (Sands rev. 4th ed. 1984). It would say, in subsection (a),
that the limitations period is what the Supreme Court has held to
be the limitations period; and in subsection (b), that suits
dismissed as untimely under
Lampf which were timely under
Lampf (a null set) shall be reinstated. To avoid a
constitutional question by holding that Congress enacted, and the
President approved, a blank sheet of paper would indeed constitute
"disingenuous evasion."
George Moore Ice Cream Co. v.
Rose, 289 U.
S. 373, 379 (1933).
2 Since respondents' reading of the statute would avoid a
constitutional question of undoubted gravity, we think it prudent
to entertain the argument even though respondents did not make it
in the Sixth Circuit. Of course the Sixth Circuit did
decide
(against respondents) the point to which the argument was directed.
See
1 F.3d
1487, 1490 (1993) ("The statute's language is plain and
unambiguous .... [It] commands the Federal courts to reinstate
cases which those courts have dismissed").
217
As an alternative reason why § 27 A(b) does not require the
reopening of final judgments, respondents suggest that the
subsection applies only to cases still pending in the federal
courts when § 27 A was enacted. This has only half the defect of
the first argument, for it makes only half of § 27 A purposeless-§
27 A(b). There is no need to "reinstate" actions that are still
pending; § 27 A(a) (the new statute of limitations) could and would
be applied by the courts of appeals. On respondents' reading, the
only consequence of § 27 A(b) would be the negligible one of
permitting the plaintiff in the pending appeal from a
statute-of-limitations dismissal to return
immediately to
the district court, instead of waiting for the court of appeals'
reversal. To enable § 27A(b) to achieve such an insignificant
consequence, one must disregard the language of the provision,
which refers generally to suits "dismissed as time barred." It is
perhaps arguable that this does
not include suits that are
not yet
finally dismissed, i.
e., suits still pending
on appeal; but there is
no basis for the contention that it
includes
only those. In short, there is no reasonable
construction on which § 27 A(b) does not require federal courts to
reopen final judgments in suits dismissed with prejudice by virtue
of
Lampf
III
Respondents submit that § 27 A(b) violates both the separation
of powers and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.3
Because the latter submission, if correct, might dictate a similar
result in a challenge to state legislation under the Fourteenth
Amendment, the former is the narrower ground for adjudication of
the constitutional questions in the case, and we therefore consider
it first.
Ashwander v.
TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 347 (1936)
(Brandeis, J., concurring). We conclude that in § 27 A(b) Congress
has exceeded its authority by requiring the federal courts to
exercise
3 "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law." U. S. Const., Arndt. 5.
218
"[t]he judicial Power of the United States," U. S. Const., Art.
III, § 1, in a manner repugnant to the text, structure, and
traditions of Article III.
Our decisions to date have identified two types of legislation
that require federal courts to exercise the judicial power in a
manner that Article III forbids. The first appears in
United
States v.
Klein, 13 Wall. 128 (1872), where we refused
to give effect to a statute that was said "[to] prescribe rules of
decision to the Judicial Department of the government in cases
pending before it."
Id., at 146. Whatever the precise scope
of
Klein, however, later decisions have made clear that its
prohibition does not take hold when Congress "amend[s] applicable
law."
Robertson v.
Seattle Audubon Soc., 503 U. S.
429, 441 (1992). Section 27 A(b) indisputably does set out
substantive legal standards for the Judiciary to apply, and in that
sense changes the law (even if solely retroactively). The second
type of unconstitutional restriction upon the exercise of judicial
power identified by past cases is exemplified by
Hayburn's
Case, 2 Dall. 409 (1792), which stands for the principle that
Congress cannot vest review of the decisions of Article III courts
in officials of the Executive Branch. See,
e. g., Chicago
&
Southern Air Lines, Inc. v.
Waterman S. S.
Corp., 333 U.
S. 103 (1948). Yet under any application of § 27A(b) only
courts are involved; no officials of other departments sit in
direct review of their decisions. Section 27 A(b) therefore offends
neither of these previously established prohibitions.
We think, however, that § 27 A(b) offends a postulate of Article
III just as deeply rooted in our law as those we have mentioned.
Article III establishes a "judicial department" with the "province
and duty ... to say what the law is" in particular cases and
controversies.
Marbury v.
Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177
(1803). The record of history shows that the Framers crafted this
charter of the judicial department with an expressed understanding
that it gives the Federal Judiciary the power, not merely to rule
on cases, but to
de-
219
cide them, subject to review only by superior courts in
the Article III hierarchy-with an understanding, in short, that "a
judgment conclusively resolves the case" because "a 'judicial
Power' is one to render dispositive judgments." Easterbrook,
Presidential Review, 40 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 905, 926 (1990). By
retroactively commanding the federal courts to reopen final
judgments, Congress has violated this fundamental principle.
A
The Framers of our Constitution lived among the ruins of a
system of intermingled legislative and judicial powers, which had
been prevalent in the colonies long before the Revolution, and
which after the Revolution had produced factional strife and
partisan oppression. In the 17th and 18th centuries colonial
assemblies and legislatures functioned as courts of equity of last
resort, hearing original actions or providing appellate review of
judicial judgments. G. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic
1776-1787, pp. 154-155 (1969). Often, however, they chose to
correct the judicial process through special bills or other enacted
legislation. It was common for such legislation not to prescribe a
resolution of the dispute, but rather simply to set aside the
judgment and order a new trial or appeal. M. Clarke, Parliamentary
Privilege in the American Colonies 49-51 (1943). See,
e.
g., Judicial Action by the Provincial Legislature of
Massachusetts, 15 Harv. L. Rev. 208 (1902) (collecting documents
from 1708-1709); 5 Laws of New Hampshire, Including Public and
Private Acts, Resolves, Votes, Etc., 1784-1792 (Metcalf ed. 1916).
Thus, as described in our discussion of
Hayburn's Case,
supra, at 218, such legislation bears not on the problem of
interbranch review but on the problem of finality of judicial
judgments.
The vigorous, indeed often radical, populism of the
revolutionary legislatures and assemblies increased the frequency
of legislative correction of judgments. Wood,
supra, at
155156, 407-408. See also
INS v.
Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 961
220
(1983) (Powell, J., concurring). "The period 1780-1787 ... was a
period of 'constitutional reaction'" to these developments, "which
... leaped suddenly to its climax in the Philadelphia Convention."
E. Corwin, The Doctrine of Judicial Review 37 (1914). Voices from
many quarters, official as well as private, decried the increasing
legislative interference with the private-law judgments of the
courts. In 1786, the Vermont Council of Censors issued an "Address
of the Council of Censors to the Freemen of the State of Vermont"
to fulfill the council's duty, under the State Constitution of
1784, to report to the people "'whether the legislative and
executive branches of government have assumed to themselves, or
exercised, other or greater powers than they are entitled to by the
Constitution.'" Vermont State Papers 1779-1786, pp. 531, 533 (Slade
ed. 1823). A principal method of usurpation identified by the
censors was "[t]he instances ... of judgments being vacated by
legislative acts."
Id., at 540. The council delivered an
opinion
"that the General Assembly, in all the instances where they have
vacated judgments, recovered in due course of law, (except where
the particular circumstances of the case evidently made it
necessary to grant a new trial) have exercised a power not
delegated, or intended to be delegated, to them, by the
Constitution .... It supercedes the necessity of any other law than
the pleasure of the Assembly, and of any other court than
themselves: for it is an imposition on the suitor, to give him the
trouble of obtaining, after several expensive trials, a final
judgment agreeably to the known established laws of the land; if
the Legislature, by a sovereign act, can interfere, reverse the
judgment, and decree in such manner, as they, unfettered by rules,
shall think proper." Ibid.
So too, the famous report of the Pennsylvania Council of Censors
in 1784 detailed the abuses of legislative interference with the
courts at the behest of private interests and
221
factions. As the General Assembly had (they wrote) made a custom
of "extending their deliberations to the cases of individuals," the
people had "been taught to consider an application to the
legislature, as a shorter and more certain mode of obtaining relief
from hardships and losses, than the usual process of law." The
censors noted that because "favour and partiality have, from the
nature of public bodies of men, predominated in the distribution of
this relief ... [t]hese dangerous procedures have been too often
recurred to, since the revolution." Report of the Committee of the
Council of Censors 6 (Bailey ed. 1784).
This sense of a sharp necessity to separate the legislative from
the judicial power, prompted by the crescendo of legislative
interference with private judgments of the courts, triumphed among
the Framers of the new Federal Constitution. See Corwin, The
Progress of Constitutional Theory Between the Declaration of
Independence and the Meeting of the Philadelphia Convention, 30 Am.
Hist. Rev. 511, 514-517 (1925). The Convention made the critical
decision to establish a judicial department independent of the
Legislative Branch by providing that "the judicial Power of the
United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such
inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and
establish." Before and during the debates on ratification, Madison,
Jefferson, and Hamilton each wrote of the factional disorders and
disarray that the system of legislative equity had produced in the
years before the framing; and each thought that the separation of
the legislative from the judicial power in the new Constitution
would cure them. Madison's Federalist No. 48, the famous
description of the process by which "[t]he legislative department
is every where extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing
all power into its impetuous vortex," referred to the report of the
Pennsylvania Council of Censors to show that in that State "cases
belonging to the judiciary department [had been] frequently drawn
within legislative cognizance and determination." The Fed-
222
eralist No. 48, pp. 333, 337 (J. Cooke ed. 1961). Madison relied
as well on Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, which
mentioned, as one example of the dangerous concentration of
governmental powers into the hands of the legislature, that "the
Legislature ... in many instances decided rights which should have
been left to judiciary controversy."
Id., at 336 (emphasis
deleted).4
If the need for separation of legislative from judicial power
was plain, the principal effect to be accomplished by that
separation was even plainer. As Hamilton wrote in his exegesis of
Article III, § 1, in The Federalist No. 81:
"It is not true ... that the parliament of Great Britain, or the
legislatures of the particular states, can rectify the
exceptionable decisions of their respective courts, in any other
sense than might be done by a future legislature of the United
States. The theory neither of the British, nor the state
constitutions, authorises the revisal of a judicial sentence, by a
legislative act .... A legislature without exceeding its province
cannot reverse a determination once made, in a particular case;
though it may prescribe a new rule for future cases." The
Federalist No. 81, p. 545 (J. Cooke ed. 1961).
The essential balance created by this allocation of authority
was a simple one. The Legislature would be possessed of power to
"prescrib[e] the rules by which the duties and rights of every
citizen are to be regulated," but the power of "[t]he
interpretation of the laws" would be "the proper and peculiar
province of the courts."
Id., No. 78, at 523, 525.
4 Read in the abstract these public pronouncements might be
taken, as the Solicitor General does take them, see Brief for
United States 28-30, to disapprove only the practice of having the
legislature itself sit as a court of original or appellate
jurisdiction. But against the backdrop of history, that reading is
untenable. Many, perhaps a plurality, of the instances of
legislative equity in the period before the framing simply involved
duly enacted laws that nullified judgments so that new trials or
judicial rulings on the merits could take place. See
supra,
at 219.
223
See also Corwin, The Doctrine of Judicial Review, at 42. The
Judiciary would be, "from the nature of its functions, ... the
[department] least dangerous to the political rights of the
constitution," not because its acts were subject to legislative
correction, but because the binding effect of its acts was limited
to particular cases and controversies. Thus, "though individual
oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the
general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that
quarter: ... so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from
both the legislative and executive." The Federalist No. 78, at 522,
523.
Judicial decisions in the period immediately after ratification
of the Constitution confirm the understanding that it forbade
interference with the final judgments of courts. In
Calder
v.
Bull, 3 Dall. 386 (1798), the Legislature of Connecticut
had enacted a statute that set aside the final judgment of a state
court in a civil case. Although the issue before this Court was the
construction of the
Ex Post Facto Clause, Art. I, § 10,
Justice Iredell (a leading Federalist who had guided the
Constitution to ratification in North Carolina) noted that
"the Legislature of [Connecticut] has been in the uniform,
uninterrupted, habit of exercising a general superintending power
over its courts of law, by granting new trials. It may, indeed,
appear strange to some of us, that in any form, there should exist
a power to grant, with respect to suits depending or adjudged, new
rights of trial, new privileges of proceeding, not previously
recognized and regulated by positive institutions .... The power
... is judicial in its nature; and whenever it is exercised, as in
the present instance, it is an exercise of judicial, not of
legislative, authority." Id., at 398.
The state courts of the era showed a similar understanding of
the separation of powers, in decisions that drew little distinction
between the federal and state constitutions. To
224
choose one representative example from a multitude: In
Bates v.
Kimball, 2 Chipman 77 (Vt. 1824), a special
Act of the Vermont Legislature authorized a party to appeal from
the judgment of a court even though, under the general law, the
time for appeal had expired. The court, noting that the unappealed
judgment had become final, set itself the question "Have the
Legislature power to vacate or annul an existing judgment between
party and party?"
Id., at 83. The answer was emphatic: "The
necessity of a distinct and separate existence of the three great
departments of government ... had been proclaimed and enforced by
... Blackstone, Jefferson and Madison," and had been "sanctioned by
the people of the United States, by being adopted in terms more or
less explicit, into all their written constitutions."
Id.,
at 84. The power to annul a final judgment, the court held (citing
Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall., at 410), was "an assumption of
Judicial power," and therefore forbidden.
Bates v.
Kimball, supra, at 90. For other examples, see
Merrill v.
Sherburne, 1 N. H. 199 (1818) (legislature
may not vacate a final judgment and grant a new trial);
Lewis v.
Webb, 3 Greenleaf 299 (Me. 1825) (same); T.
Cooley, Constitutional Limitations 95-96 (1868) (collecting cases);
J. Sutherland, Statutory Construction 18-19 (J. Lewis ed. 1904)
(same).
By the middle of the 19th century, the constitutional
equilibrium created by the separation of the legislative power to
make general law from the judicial power to apply that law in
particular cases was so well understood and accepted that it could
survive even
Dred Scott v.
Sandford, 19 How. 393
(1857). In his First Inaugural Address, President Lincoln explained
why the political branches could not, and need not, interfere with
even that infamous judgment:
"I do not forget the position assumed by some, that
constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court;
nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case, upon
the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit .... And while
it is obviously possible that
225
such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil
effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with
the chance that it may be over-ruled, and never become a precedent
for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a
different practice." 4 R. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham
Lincoln 268 (1953) (First Inaugural Address 1861).
And the great constitutional scholar Thomas Cooley addressed
precisely the question before us in his 1868 treatise:
"If the legislature cannot thus indirectly control the action of
the courts, by requiring of them a construction of the law
according to its own views, it is very plain it cannot do so
directly, by setting aside their judgments, compelling them to
grant new trials, ordering the discharge of offenders, or directing
what particular steps shall be taken in the progress of a judicial
inquiry." Cooley, supra, at 94-95.
B
Section 27 A(b) effects a clear violation of the
separationof-powers principle we have just discussed. It is, of
course, retroactive legislation, that is, legislation that
prescribes what the law
was at an earlier time, when the act
whose effect is controlled by the legislation occurred-in this
case, the filing of the initial Rule 10b-5 action in the District
Court. When retroactive legislation requires its own application in
a case already finally adjudicated, it does no more and no less
than "reverse a determination once made, in a particular case." The
Federalist No. 81, at 545. Our decisions stemming from
Hayburn's Case-although their precise holdings are not
strictly applicable here, see
supra, at 218-have uniformly
provided fair warning that such an act exceeds the powers of
Congress. See,
e. g., Chicago & Southern Air
Lines, Inc., 333 U. S., at 113 ("Judgments within the powers
vested in courts by the Judiciary Article
226
of the Constitution may not lawfully be revised, overturned or
refused faith and credit by another Department of Government");
United States v.
O'Grady, 22 Wall. 641, 647-648
(1875) ("Judicial jurisdiction implies the power to hear and
determine a cause, and ... Congress cannot subject the judgments of
the Supreme Court to the re-examination and revision of any other
tribunal");
Gordon v.
United States, 117 U. S. Appx.
697, 700-704 (1864) (opinion of Taney, C. J.) (judgments of Article
III courts are "final and conclusive upon the rights of the
parties");
Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall., at 411 (opinion of
Wilson and Blair, JJ., and Peters, D. J.) ("[R]evision and control"
of Article III judgments is "radically inconsistent with the
independence of that judicial power which is vested in the
courts");
id., at 413 (opinion of Iredell, J., and
Sitgreaves, D. J.) ("[N]o decision of any court of the United
States can, under any circumstances, ... be liable to a revision,
or even suspension, by the [l]egislature itself, in whom no
judicial power of any kind appears to be vested"). See also
Pennsylvania v.
Wheeling &
Belmont Bridge
Co., 18 How. 421, 431 (1856) ("[I]t is urged, that the act of
congress cannot have the effect and operation to annul the judgment
of the court already rendered, or the rights determined thereby
.... This, as a general proposition, is certainly not to be denied,
especially as it respects adjudication upon the private rights of
parties. When they have passed into judgment the right becomes
absolute, and it is the duty of the court to enforce it"). Today
those clear statements must either be honored, or else proved
false.
It is true, as petitioners contend, that Congress can always
revise the judgments of Article III courts in one sense:
When a new law makes clear that it is retroactive, an appellate
court must apply that law in reviewing judgments still on appeal
that were rendered before the law was enacted, and must alter the
outcome accordingly. See
United States v.
Schooner
Peggy, 1 Cranch 103 (1801);
Landgraf v.
USI Film
Products, 511 U.
S. 244, 273-280 (1994). Since that is
227
so, petitioners argue, federal courts must apply the "new" law
created by § 27 A(b) in finally adjudicated cases as well; for the
line that separates lower court judgments that are pending on
appeal (or may still be appealed), from lower court judgments that
are final, is determined by statute, see,
e. g., 28
U. S. C. § 2107(a) (30-day time limit for appeal to federal court
of appeals), and so cannot possibly be a
constitutional
line. But a distinction between judgments from which all appeals
have been forgone or completed, and judgments that remain on appeal
(or subject to being appealed), is implicit in what Article III
creates: not a batch of unconnected courts, but a judicial
department composed of "inferior Courts" and "one supreme
Court." Within that hierarchy, the decision of an inferior court is
not (unless the time for appeal has expired) the final word of the
department as a whole. It is the obligation of the last court in
the hierarchy that rules on the case to give effect to Congress's
latest enactment, even when that has the effect of overturning the
judgment of an inferior court, since each court, at every level,
must "decide according to existing laws."
Schooner Peggy,
supra, at 109. Having achieved finality, however, a judicial
decision becomes the last word of the judicial department with
regard to a particular case or controversy, and Congress may not
declare by retroactive legislation that the law applicable
to
that very case was something other than what the courts said it
was. Finality of a legal judgment is determined by statute, just as
entitlement to a government benefit is a statutory creation; but
that no more deprives the former of its constitutional significance
for separation-ofpowers analysis than it deprives the latter of its
significance for due process purposes. See,
e. g., Cleveland Bd.
of Ed. v.
Loudermill, 470 U. S. 532 (1985);
Meachum v.
Fano, 427 U. S. 215 (1976).
To be sure, § 27 A(b) reopens (or directs the reopening of)
final judgments in a whole class of cases rather than in a
particular suit. We do not see how that makes any differ-
228
ence. The separation-of-powers violation here, if there is any,
consists of depriving judicial judgments of the conclusive effect
that they had when they were announced, not of acting in a
manner-viz., with particular rather than general effect-that is
unusual (though, we must note, not impossible) for a legislature.
To be sure, a general statute such as this one may reduce the
perception that legislative interference with judicial judgments
was prompted by individual favoritism; but it is legislative
interference with judicial judgments nonetheless. Not favoritism,
nor even corruption, but
power is the object of the
separation-of-powers prohibition. The prohibition is violated when
an individual final judgment is legislatively rescinded for even
the
very best of reasons, such as the legislature's genuine
conviction (supported by all the law professors in the land) that
the judgment was wrong; and it is violated 40 times over when 40
final judgments are legislatively dissolved.
It is irrelevant as well that the final judgments reopened by §
27 A(b) rested on the bar of a statute of limitations. The rules of
finality, both statutory and judge made, treat a dismissal on
statute-of-limitations grounds the same way they treat a dismissal
for failure to state a claim, for failure to prove substantive
liability, or for failure to prosecute: as a judgment on the
merits. See,
e. g., Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 41(b);
United States v.
Oppenheimer, 242 U. S. 85, 87-88
(1916). Petitioners suggest, directly or by implication, two
reasons why a merits judgment based on this particular ground may
be uniquely subject to congressional nullification. First, there is
the fact that the length and indeed even the very existence of a
statute of limitations upon a federal cause of action is entirely
subject to congressional control. But virtually
all of the
reasons why a final judgment on the merits is rendered on a federal
claim are subject to congressional control. Congress can eliminate,
for example, a particular element of a cause of action that
plaintiffs have found it difficult to establish; or an evidentiary
rule that has often
229
excluded essential testimony; or a rule of offsetting wrong
(such as contributory negligence) that has often prevented
recovery. To distinguish statutes of limitations on the ground that
they are mere creatures of Congress is to distinguish them not at
all. The second supposedly distinguishing characteristic of a
statute of limitations is that it can be extended, without
violating the Due Process Clause, after the cause of the action
arose and even after the statute itself has expired. See,
e. g.,
Chase Securities Corp. v.
Donaldson, 325 U. S. 304 (1945). But
that also does not set statutes of limitations apart. To mention
only one other broad category of judgment-producing legal rule:
Rules of pleading and proof can similarly be altered after the
cause of action arises,
Landgraf v.
USI Film Products,
supra, at 275, and n. 29, and even, if the statute clearly so
requires, after they have been applied in a case but before final
judgment has been entered. Petitioners' principle would therefore
lead to the conclusion that final judgments rendered on the basis
of a stringent (or, alternatively, liberal) rule of pleading or
proof may be set aside for retrial under a new liberal (or,
alternatively, stringent) rule of pleading or proof. This alone
provides massive scope for undoing final judgments and would
substantially subvert the doctrine of separation of powers.
The central theme of the dissent is a variant on these
arguments. The dissent maintains that
Lampf "announced" a
new statute of limitations,
post, at 246, in an act of
"judicial ... lawmaking,"
post, at 247, that "changed the
law,"
post, at 250. That statement, even if relevant, would
be wrong. The point decided in
Lampfhad never before been
addressed by this Court, and was therefore an open question, no
matter what the lower courts had held at the time. But the more
important point is that
Lampf as such is irrelevant to this
case. The dissent itself perceives that "[w]e would have the same
issue to decide had Congress enacted the
Lampf rule," and
that the
Lampf rule's genesis in judicial lawmaking rather
than, shall we say, legislative lawmaking, "should not
230
affect the separation-of-powers analysis."
Post, at 247.
Just so. The issue here is not the validity or even the source of
the legal rule that produced the Article III judgments, but rather
the immunity from legislative abrogation of those judgments
themselves. The separation-of-powers question before us has nothing
to do with
Lampf, and the dissent's attack on
Lamp!
has nothing to do with the question before us.
C
Apart from the statute we review today, we know of no instance
in which Congress has attempted to set aside the final judgment of
an Article III court by retroactive legislation. That prolonged
reticence would be amazing if such interference were not understood
to be constitutionally proscribed. The closest analogue that the
Government has been able to put forward is the statute at issue in
United States v.
Sioux Nation, 448 U. S. 371 (1980).
That law required the Court of Claims, "'[n]otwithstanding any
other provision of law ... [to] review on the merits, without
regard to the defense of res judicata or collateral estoppel,'" a
Sioux claim for just compensation from the United Stateseven though
the Court of Claims had previously heard and rejected that very
claim. We considered and rejected separation-of-powers objections
to the statute based upon
Hayburn's Case and
United
States v.
Klein. See 448 U. S., at 391-392. The basis
for our rejection was a line of precedent (starting with
Cherokee Nation v.
United States, 270 U. S. 476
(1926)) that stood, we said, for the proposition that "Congress has
the power to waive the res judicata effect of a prior judgment
entered in the Government's favor on a claim against the United
States."
Sioux Nation, 448 U. S., at 397. And our holding
was as narrow as the precedent on which we had relied: "In sum, ...
Congress' mere waiver of the res judicata effect of a prior
judicial decision rejecting the validity of a legal claim against
the United States does
231
not violate the doctrine of separation of powers."
Id.,
at 407.5
The Solicitor General suggests that even if
Sioux Nation
is read in accord with its holding, it nonetheless establishes that
Congress may require Article III courts to reopen their final
judgments, since "if res judicata were compelled by Article III to
safeguard the structural independence of the courts, the doctrine
would not be subject to waiver by any party litigant." Brief for
United States 27 (citing
Commodity Futures Trading Comm'n v.
Schor, 478 U.
S. 833, 850-851 (1986)). But the proposition that legal
defenses based upon doctrines central to the courts' structural
independence can never be waived simply does not accord with our
cases. Certainly one such doctrine consists of the "judicial Power"
to disregard an unconstitutional statute, see
Marbury, 1
Cranch, at 177; yet none would suggest that a litigant may never
waive the defense that a statute is unconstitutional. See,
e.
g., G.
D. Searle &
Co. v.
Cohn,
455 U. S. 404,
414 (1982). What may follow from our holding that the judicial
power unalterably includes the power to render final judgments is
not that waivers of res judicata are always impermissible, but
rather that, as many Federal Courts of Appeals have held, waivers
of res judicata need not always be acceptedthat trial courts may in
appropriate cases raise the res judicata bar on their own motion.
See,
e. g., Coleman v.
Ramada Hotel Operating Co.,
933 F.2d
470, 475 (CA7 1991);
In re Medomak Canning, 922 F.2d
895, 904 (CA1 1990);
Holloway Constr. Co. v.
United
States Dept. of Labor, 891 F.2d
1211, 1212 (CA6 1989). Waiver subject to the control of the
5 The dissent quotes a passage from the opinion saying that
Congress "'only was providing a forum so that a new judicial review
of the Black Hills claim could take place.'''
Post, at 256
(quoting 448 U. S., at 407). That is quite consistent with the res
judicata holding. Any party who waives the defense of res judicata
provides a forum for a new judicial review.
232
courts themselves would obviously raise no issue of separation
of powers, and would be precisely in accord with the language of
the decision that the Solicitor General relies upon. We held in
Schor that, although a litigant had consented to bring a
state-law counterclaim before an Article I tribunal, 478 U. S., at
849, we would nonetheless choose to consider his Article III
challenge, because "when these Article III limitations are at
issue, notions of consent and waiver cannot be
dispositive,"
id., at 851 (emphasis added). See also
Freytag v.
Commissioner, 501 U. S. 868, 878-879
(1991) (finding a "rare cas[e] in which we should exercise our
discretion" to hear a waived claim based on the Appointments
Clause, Art. II, § 2, cl. 2).6
Petitioners also rely on a miscellany of decisions upholding
legislation that altered rights fixed by the final judgments of
non-Article III courts, see,
e. g., Sampeyreac v.
United
States, 7 Pet. 222, 238 (1833);
Freeborn v.
Smith, 2 Wall. 160 (1865), or administrative agencies,
Paramino Lumber Co. v.
Marshall, 309 U. S. 370 (1940), or
that altered the prospective effect of injunctions entered by
Article III courts,
Wheeling &
Belmont Bridge
Co., 18 How., at 421. These cases distinguish themselves;
nothing in our holding today calls them into question. Petitioners
rely on general statements from some of these cases that
legislative annulment of final judgments is not an exercise of
judicial power. But even if it were our practice to decide cases by
weight of prior dicta, we would find the many dicta that reject
congressional
6 The statute at issue in
United States v.
Sioux
Nation, 448 U. S.
371 (1980), seemingly prohibited courts from raising the res
judicata defense
sua sponte. See
id., at 432-433
(REHNQUIST, J., dissenting). The Court did not address that point;
as far as appears it saw no reason to raise the defense on its own.
Of course the unexplained silences of our decisions lack
precedential weight. See,
e. g., Brecht v.
Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, 630-631
(1993).
233
power to revise the judgments of Article III courts to be the
more instructive authority. See
supra, at 225-226.7
Finally, petitioners liken § 27 A(b) to Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 60(b), which authorizes courts to relieve parties from a
final judgment for grounds such as excusable neglect, newly
discovered evidence, fraud, or "any other reason justifying relief
.... " We see little resemblance. Rule 60(b), which authorizes
discretionary judicial revision of judgments in the listed
situations and in other" 'extraordinary circumstances,'"
Liljeberg v.
Health Services Acquisition Corp.,
486 U. S. 847,
864 (1988), does not impose any legislative mandate to reopen upon
the courts, but merely reflects and
7The dissent tries to turn the dicta of the territorial-court
cases,
Sampeyreac and
Freeborn, into holdings. It
says of
Sampeyreac that "the relevant judicial power that
the [challenged] statute arguably supplanted was this Court's
Article III appellate jurisdiction."
Post, at 253. Even if
it were true that the judicial power under discussion was that of
this Court (which is doubtful), the point could still not possibly
constitute a holding, since there was no "supplanted power" at
issue in the case. One of the principal grounds of decision was
that the finality of the territorial court's decree had
not
been retroactively abrogated. The decree had been entered under a
previous statute which provided that a decree "shall be final and
conclusive
between the parties." Sampeyreac v.
United
States, 7 Pet., at 239 (emphasis in original). The asserted
basis for reopening was fraud, in that Sampeyreac did not actually
exist. We reasoned that "as Sampeyreac was a fictitious person, he
was no party to the decree, and the act [under which the decree had
allegedly become final] in strictness does not apply to the case."
Ibid.
The dissent likewise says of
Freeborn that "the 'judicial
power' to which the opinion referred was this Court's Article III
appellate jurisdiction."
Post, at 255. Once again, even if
it was, the point remains dictum. No final judgment was at issue in
Freeborn. The challenged statute reached only "'cases of
appeal or writ of error heretofore prosecuted
and now
pending in the supreme court of the United States,'" see
post, at 254, n. 7 (quoting 13 Stat. 441) (emphasis added).
As we have explained, see
supra, at 226, Congress may
require (insofar as separation-of-powers limitations are concerned)
that new statutes be applied in cases not yet final but still
pending on appeal.
234
confirms the courts' own inherent and discretionary power,
"firmly established in English practice long before the foundation
of our Republic," to set aside a judgment whose enforcement would
work inequity.
Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v.
Hartford-Empire
Co., 322 U. S.
238, 244 (1944). Thus, Rule 60(b), and the tradition that it
embodies, would be relevant refutation of a claim that reopening a
final judgment is always a denial of property without due process;
but they are irrelevant to the claim that legislative instruction
to reopen impinges upon the independent constitutional authority of
the courts.
The dissent promises to provide "[a] few contemporary examples"
of statutes retroactively requiring final judgments to be reopened,
"to demonstrate that [such statutes] are ordinary products of the
exercise of legislative power."
Post, at 256. That promise
is not kept. The relevant retroactivity, of course, consists not of
the requirement that there be set aside a judgment that has been
rendered
prior to its being setting aside-for example, a
statute passed today which says that all default judgments rendered
in the future may be reopened within 90 days after their entry. In
that sense,
all requirements to reopen are "retroactive,"
and the designation is superfluous. Nothing we say today precludes
a law such as that. The finality that a court can pronounce is no
more than what the law in existence at the time of judgment will
permit it to pronounce. If the law then applicable says that the
judgment may be reopened for certain reasons, that limitation is
built into the judgment itself, and its finality is so conditioned.
The present case, however, involves a judgment that Congress
subjected to a reopening requirement which did not exist when the
judgment was pronounced. The dissent provides not a single clear
prior instance of such congressional action.
The dissent cites, first, Rule 60(b), which it describes as a
"familiar remedial measure."
Ibid. As we have just
discussed, Rule 60(b) does not provide a new remedy at all, but
235
is simply the recitation of pre-existing judicial power. The
same is true of another of the dissent's examples, 28 U. S. C. §
2255, which provides federal prisoners a statutory motion to vacate
a federal sentence. This procedure "'restates, clarifies and
simplifies the procedure in the nature of the ancient writ of error
coram nobis.'"
United States v.
Hayman, 342 U. S. 205, 218 (1952)
(quoting the 1948 Reviser's Note to § 2255). It is meaningless to
speak of these statutes as applying "retroactively," since they
simply codified judicial practice that pre-existed. Next, the
dissent cites the provision of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil
Relief Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 1178, 50 U. S. C. App. § 520(4), which
authorizes courts, upon application, to reopen judgments against
members of the Armed Forces entered while they were on active duty.
It could not be clearer, however, that this provision was not
retroactive. It says: "If any judgment
shall be rendered in
any action or proceeding governed by this section against any
person in military service during the period of such service ...
such judgment may ... be opened .... " (Emphasis added.)
The dissent also cites,
post, at 258, a provision of the
Handicapped Children's Protection Act of 1986, 82 Stat. 901, 20 U.
S. C. § 1415(e)(4)(B) (1988 ed. and Supp. V), which provided for
the award of attorney's fees under the Education for All
Handicapped Children Act of 1975, 89 Stat. 773, 20 U. S. C. § 1411
et seq. (1988 ed. and Supp. V). This changed the law
regarding attorney's fees under the Education for All Handicapped
Children Act, after our decision in
Smith v.
Robinson, 468
U. S. 992 (1984), found such fees to be unavailable. The
provision of the Statutes at Large adopting this amendment to the
United States Code specified, in effect, that it would apply not
only to proceedings brought after its enactment, but also to
proceedings pending at the time of, or brought after, the decision
in
Smith. See 100 Stat. 798. The amendment says nothing
about reopening final judgments, and the retroactivity provision
may well mean noth-
236
ing more than that it applies not merely to new suits commenced
after the date of its enactment, but also to
previously
filed (but not yet terminated) suits of the specified sort. This
interpretation would be consistent with the only case the dissent
cites, which involved a court-entered consent decree not yet fully
executed.
Counsel v.
Dow, 849 F. 2d 731, 734, 738-739
(CA2 1988). Alternatively, the statute can perhaps be understood to
create a new cause of action for attorney's fees attributable to
already concluded litigation. That would create no
separation-of-powers problem, and would be consistent with this
Court's view that "[a]ttorney's fee determinations ... are
'collateral to the main cause of action' and 'uniquely separable
from the cause of action to be proved at trial.'"
Landgrafv. USI
Film Products, 511 U. S., at 277 (quoting
White v.
New Hampshire Dept. of Employment Security, 455 U. S. 445, 451-452
(1982)).8
The dissent's perception that retroactive reopening provisions
are to be found all about us is perhaps attributable to its
inversion of the statutory presumption regarding retroactivity.
Thus, it asserts that Rule 60(b) must be retroactive, since "[n]ot
a single word in its text suggests that it does not apply to
judgments entered prior to its effective date."
8 Even the dissent's scouring the 50 States for support has
proved unproductive. It cites statutes from five States,
post, at 258-259, nn. 12-13. Four of those statutes involve
a virtually identical provision, which permits the state-chartered
entity that takes over an insolvent insurance company to apply to
have any of the insurer's default judgments set aside. See Del.
Code Ann., Tit. 18, § 4418 (1989); Fla. Stat. § 631.734 (1984); N.
Y. Ins. Law § 7717 (McKinney Supp. 1995); 40 Pa. Cons. Stat. §
991.1716 (Supp. 1994). It is not at all clear, indeed it seems to
us unlikely, that these statutes applied retroactively, to
judgments that were final before enactment of the scheme that
created the state-chartered entity. The last statute involves a
discretionary procedure for allowing appeal by
pro se
litigants, Va. Code Ann.
§8.01-428(C) (Supp. 1994). It is
obvious that the provision did not apply retroactively, to
judgments rendered before the procedures were established.
237
Post, at 256-257. This reverses the traditional rule,
confirmed only last Term, that statutes do
not apply
retroactively
unless Congress expressly states that they do.
See
Landgraf, supra, at 277-280. The dissent adds that "the
traditional construction of remedial measures ... support[s]
construing [Rule 60(b)] to apply to past as well as future
judgments."
Post, at 257. But reliance on the vaguely
remedial purpose of a statute to defeat the presumption against
retroactivity was rejected in the companion cases of
Landgraf, see 511 U. S., at 284-286, and n. 37, and
Rivers v.
Roadway Express, 511 U. S., at 309-313. Cf.
Landgraf, supra, at 297 (Blackmun, J., dissenting) ("This
presumption [against retroactive legislation] need not be applied
to remedial legislation ... ") (citing
Sampeyreac, 7 Pet.,
at 238).
The dissent sets forth a number of hypothetical horribles
flowing from our assertedly "rigid holding"-for example, the
inability to set aside a civil judgment that has become final
during a period when a natural disaster prevented the timely filing
of a certiorari petition.
Post, at 262. That is horrible not
because of our holding, but because the underlying statute
itself enacts a "rigid" jurisdictional bar to entertaining
untimely civil petitions. Congress could undoubtedly enact
prospective legislation permitting, or indeed requiring,
this Court to make equitable exceptions to an otherwise applicable
rule of finality, just as district courts do pursuant to Rule
60(b). It is no indication whatever of the invalidity of the
constitutional rule which we announce, that it produces unhappy
consequences when a legislature lacks foresight, and acts belatedly
to remedy a deficiency in the law. That is a routine result of
constitutional rules. See,
e. g., Collins v.
Youngblood, 497
U. S. 37 (1990)
(Ex Post Facto Clause precludes
postoffense statutory extension of a criminal sentence);
United
States Trust Co. of N.
Y. v.
New Jersey, 431 U. S. 1 (1977)
(Contract Clause prevents retroactive alteration of contract with
state bondholders);
Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v.
Radford, 295
U. S. 555, 589-
238
590,601-602 (1935) (Takings Clause invalidates a bankruptcy law
that abrogates a vested property interest). See also
United
States v.
Security Industrial Bank, 459 U. S. 70, 78
(1982).
Finally, we may respond to the suggestion of the concurrence
that this case should be decided more narrowly. The concurrence is
willing to acknowledge only that
"sometimes Congress lacks
the power under Article I to reopen an otherwise closed court
judgment,"
post, at 240-241. In the present context, what it
considers critical is that § 27 A(b) is "exclusively retroactive"
and "appli[es] to a limited number of individuals."
Post, at
241. If Congress had only "provid[ed] some of the assurances
against 'singling out' that ordinary legislative activity normally
provides-say, prospectivity and general applicability-we might have
a different case."
Post, at 243.
This seems to us wrong in both fact and law. In point of fact, §
27 A(b) does not "single out" any defendant for adverse treatment
(or any plaintiff for favorable treatment). Rather, it identifies a
class of actions (those filed
pre-Lampf, timely under
applicable state law, but dismissed as time barred
post-Lamp
f) which embraces many plaintiffs and defendants, the precise
number and identities of whom we even now do not know. The
concurrence's contention that the number of covered defendants "is
too small
(compared with the number of similar, uncovered
firms) to distinguish meaningfully the law before us from a
similar law aimed at a single closed case,"
post, at 244
(emphasis added), renders the concept of "singling out"
meaningless.
More importantly, however, the concurrence's point seems to us
wrong in law. To be sure, the class of actions identified by § 27
A(b) could have been more expansive
(e. g., all actions that
were
or could have been filed
pre-Lampf) and the
provision could have been written to have prospective as well as
retroactive effect
(e. g., "all
post-Lampf dismissed
actions, plus all future actions under Rule 10b-5, shall be timely
if brought within 30 years of the injury"). But it escapes us
239
how this could in any way cause the statute to be any less an
infringement upon the judicial power. The nub of that infringement
consists
not of the Legislature's acting in a particularized
and hence (according to the concurrence) nonlegislative fashion; 9
but rather of the Legislature's nullifying prior, authoritative
judicial action. It makes no difference whatever to that
separation-of-powers violation that it is in gross rather than
particularized
(e. g., "we hereby set aside
all
hitherto entered judicial orders"), or that it is not accompanied
by an "almost" violation of the Bill of Attainder Clause, or an
"almost" violation of any other constitutional provision.
Ultimately, the concurrence agrees with our judgment only
"[b]ecause the law before us embodies risks of the very sort that
our Constitution's 'separation of powers' prohibition seeks to
avoid."
Post, at 246. But the doctrine of separation of
powers is a
structural safeguard rather than a remedy to be
applied only when specific harm, or risk of specific harm, can be
identified. In its major features (of which the conclusiveness of
judicial judgments is assuredly one) it is a prophylactic device,
establishing high walls and clear distinctions because low walls
and vague distinctions will not be judicially defensible in the
heat of interbranch conflict. It is interesting that the
concurrence quotes twice, and cites without quotation a third time,
the opinion of Justice Powell in
9 The premise that there is something wrong with particularized
legislative action is of course questionable. While legislatures
usually act through laws of general applicability, that is by no
means their only legitimate mode of action. Private bills in
Congress are still common, and were even more so in the days before
establishment of the Claims Court. Even laws that impose a duty or
liability upon a single individual or firm are not on that account
invalid-or else we would not have the extensive jurisprudence that
we do concerning the Bill of Attainder Clause, including cases
which say that it requires not merely "singling out" but also
punishment, see,
e. g., United States v.
Lovett, 328 U.
S. 303, 315-318 (1946), and a case which says that Congress may
legislate "a legitimate class of one,"
Nixon v.
Administrator of General Services, 433 U. S. 425, 472
(1977).
240
INS v.
Chadha, 462 U. S., at 959. But Justice
Powell wrote only for himself in that case. He alone expressed
dismay that "[t]he Court's decision ... apparently will invalidate
every use of the legislative veto," and opined that "[t]he breadth
of this holding gives one pause."
Ibid. It did not give
pause to the six-Justice majority, which put an end to the
long-simmering interbranch dispute that would otherwise have been
indefinitely prolonged. We think legislated invalidation of
judicial judgments deserves the same categorical treatment accorded
by
Chadha to congressional invalidation of executive action.
The delphic alternative suggested by the concurrence (the setting
aside of judgments is all right so long as Congress does not
"impermissibly trey] to
apply, as well as
make, the
law,"
post, at 241) simply prolongs doubt and multiplies
confrontation. Separation of powers, a distinctively American
political doctrine, profits from the advice authored by a
distinctively American poet:
Good fences make good neighbors.
***
We know of no previous instance in which Congress has enacted
retroactive legislation requiring an Article III court to set aside
a final judgment, and for good reason. The Constitution's
separation of legislative and judicial powers denies it the
authority to do so. Section 27 A(b) is unconstitutional to the
extent that it requires federal courts to reopen final judgments
entered before its enactment. The judgment of the Court of Appeals
is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE BREYER, concurring in the judgment.
I agree with the majority that § 27 A(b) of the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U. S. C. § 78aa-1 (1988 ed., Supp. V)
(hereinafter §27A(b)) is unconstitutional. In my view, the
separation of powers inherent in our Constitution means that at
least
sometimes Congress lacks the power under Ar-
241
ticle I to reopen an otherwise closed court judgment. And the
statutory provision here at issue, § 27 A(b), violates a basic
"separation-of-powers" principle-one intended to protect individual
liberty. Three features of this law-its exclusively retroactive
effect, its application to a limited number of individuals, and its
reopening of closed judgmentstaken together, show that Congress
here impermissibly tried to
apply, as well as
make,
the law. Hence, § 27A(b) falls outside the scope of Article 1. But,
it is far less clear, and unnecessary for the purposes of this case
to decide, that separation of powers "is violated"
whenever
an "individual final judgment is legislatively rescinded" or that
it is "violated 40 times over when 40 final judgments are
legislatively dissolved." See
ante, at 228. I therefore
write separately.
The majority provides strong historical evidence that Congress
lacks the power simply to reopen, and to revise, final judgments in
individual cases. See
ante, at 219-222. The Framers would
have hesitated to lodge in the Legislature both that kind of power
and the power to enact general laws, as part of their effort to
avoid the "despotic government" that accompanies the "accumulation
of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same
hands." The Federalist No. 47, p. 241 (J. Gideon ed. 1831) (J.
Madison);
id., No. 48, at 249 (quoting T. Jefferson, Notes
on the State of Virginia). For one thing, the authoritative
application of a general law to a particular case by an independent
judge, rather than by the legislature itself, provides an assurance
that even an unfair law at least will be applied evenhandedly
according to its terms. See,
e. g., 1 Montesquieu,
The Spirit of Laws 174 (T. Nugent transl. 1886) (describing one
objective of the "separation of powers" as preventing "the same
monarch or senate," having "enact[ed] tyrannical laws" from
"execut[ing] them in a tyrannical manner"); W. Gwyn, The Meaning of
the Separation of Powers 42-43, 104-106 (1965) (discussing
historically relevant sources that explain one purpose of
separation of powers as helping to assure an "impartial rule of
242
BREYER, J., concurring in judgment
law"). For another thing, as Justice Powell has pointed out, the
Constitution's "separation-of-powers" principles reflect, in part,
the Framers' "concern that a legislature should not be able
unilaterally to impose a substantial deprivation on one person."
INS v.
Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 962 (1983)
(opinion concurring in judgment). The Framers "expressed" this
principle, both in "specific provisions, such as the Bill of
Attainder Clause," and in the Constitution's "general allocation of
power."
Ibid.; see
United States v.
Brown,
381 U. S. 437,
442 (1965) (Bill of Attainder Clause intended to implement the
separation of powers, acting as "a general safeguard against
legislative exercise of the judicial function");
Fletcher v.
Peck, 6 Cranch 87, 136 (1810) (Marshall, C. J.) ("It is the
peculiar province of the legislature to prescribe general rules for
the government of society; the application of those rules to
individuals in society would seem to be the duty of other
departments"); cf.
Hurtado v.
California, 110 U. S.
516, 535-536 (1884).
Despite these two important "separation-of-powers" concerns,
sometimes Congress can enact legislation that focuses upon a
small group, or even a single individual. See,
e. g.,
Nixon v.
Administrator of General Services, 433 U. S. 425, 468-484
(1977);
Selective Service System v.
Minnesota Public
Interest Research Group, 468 U. S. 841, 846-856
(1984);
Brown, supra, at 453-456. Congress also sometimes
passes private legislation. See
Chadha, supra, at 966, n. 9
(Powell, J., concurring in judgment) ("When Congress grants
particular individuals relief or benefits under its spending power,
the danger of oppressive action that the separation of powers was
designed to avoid is not implicated"). And,
sometimes
Congress can enact legislation that, as a practical matter,
radically changes the effect of an individual, previously entered
court decree. See
Pennsylvania v.
Wheeling &
Belmont Bridge Co., 18 How. 421 (1856). Statutes that apply
prospectively and (in part because of that prospectivity) to an
open-ended class of persons, however, are more than sim-
243
ply an effort to apply, person by person, a previously enacted
law, or to single out for oppressive treatment one, or a handful,
of particular individuals. Thus, it seems to me, if Congress
enacted legislation that reopened an otherwise closed judgment but
in a way that mitigated some of the here relevant
"separation-of-powers" concerns, by also providing some of the
assurances against "singling out" that ordinary legislative
activity normally provides-say, prospectivity and general
applicability-we might have a different case. Cf.
Brown,
supra, at 461 ("Congress must accomplish [its desired] results
by rules of general applicability. It cannot specify the people
upon whom the sanction it prescribes is to be levied"). Because
such legislation, in light of those mitigating circumstances, might
well present a different constitutional question, I do not
subscribe to the Court's more absolute statement.
The statute before us, however, has no such mitigating features.
It reopens previously closed judgments. It is entirely retroactive,
applying only to those Rule 10b-5 actions actually filed, on or
before (but on which final judgments were entered after) June 19,
1991. See 15 U. S. C. § 78j(b) and 17 CFR 240.10b-5 (1994). It
lacks generality, for it applies only to a few individual
instances. See Hearings on H. R. 3185 before the Subcommittee on
Telecommunications and Finance of the House of Representatives
Committee on Energy and Commerce, 102d Cong., 1st Sess., 3-4 (1991)
(listing, by case name, only 15 cases that had been dismissed on
the basis of
Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis &
Petigrow v.
Gilbertson, 501 U. S. 350 (1991)).
And, it is underinclusive, for it excludes from its coverage others
who, relying upon
pre-Lamp! limitations law, may have failed
to bring timely securities fraud actions against any other of the N
ation's hundreds of thousands of businesses. I concede that its
coverage extends beyond a single individual to many potential
plaintiffs in these class actions. But because the legislation
disfavors not plaintiffs but defendants, I should think
244
that the latter number is the more relevant. And, that number is
too small (compared with the number of similar, uncovered firms) to
distinguish meaningfully the law before us from a similar law aimed
at a single closed case. Nor does the existence of § 27 A(a), which
applies to Rule 10b-5 actions pending at the time of the
legislation, change this conclusion. That provision seems aimed at
too few additional individuals to mitigate the low level of
generality of § 27A(b). See Hearings on H. R. 3185,
supra,
at 5-6 (listing 17 cases in which dismissal motions based on
Lamp! were pending).
The upshot is that, viewed in light of the relevant,
libertyprotecting objectives of the "separation of powers," this
case falls directly within the scope of language in this Court's
cases suggesting a restriction on Congress' power to reopen closed
court judgments. See,
e. g., Chicago &
Southern Air
Lines, Inc. v.
Waterman S. S.
Corp., 333 U. S. 103, 113 (1948)
("Judgments within the powers vested in courts by the Judiciary
Article of the Constitution may not lawfully be revised [or]
overturned ... by another Department of Government");
Wheeling &
Belmont Bridge Co., supra, at 431
("[I]fthe remedy in this case had been an action at law, and a
judgment rendered in favor of the plaintiff for damages, the right
to these would have passed beyond the reach of the power of
congress");
Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409, 413 (1792) (letter
from Justice Iredell and District Judge Sitgreaves to President
Washington) ("[N]o decision of any court of the United States can,
under any circumstances, in our opinion, agreeable to the
Constitution, be liable to a revision, or even suspension, by the
Legislature itself").
At the same time, because the law before us
both reopens
final judgments
and lacks the liberty-protecting assurances
that prospectivity and greater generality would have provided, we
need not, and we should not, go further-to make of the reopening
itself, an absolute, always determinative distinction, a
"prophylactic device," or a foundation for the building of a new
"high wal[l]" between the branches.
245
Ante, at 239. Indeed, the unnecessary building of such
walls is, in itself, dangerous, because the Constitution blends, as
well as separates, powers in its effort to create a government that
will work for, as well as protect the liberties of, its citizens.
See The Federalist No. 48 (J. Madison). That doctrine does not
"divide the branches into watertight compartments," nor "establish
and divide fields of black and white."
Springer v.
Philippine Islands, 277 U. S. 189, 209, 211
(1928) (Holmes, J., dissenting); see also
Youngstown Sheet
&
Tube Co. v.
Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 635 (1952)
(Jackson, J., concurring) (referring to the need for "workable
government");
id., at 596-597 (Frankfurter, J., concurring);
Mistretta v.
United States, 488 U. S. 361, 381 (1989)
(the doctrine does not create a "hermetic division among the
Branches" but "a carefully crafted system of checked and balanced
power within each Branch"). And, important separation-of-powers
decisions of this Court have sometimes turned, not upon absolute
distinctions, but upon degree. See,
e. g., Crowell v.
Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 48-54 (1932);
A. L. A. Schechter
Poultry Corp. v.
United States, 295 U. S. 495, 551-555
(1935) (Cardozo, J., concurring). As the majority invokes the
advice of an American poet, one might consider as well that poet's
caution, for he not only notes that "Something there is that
doesn't love a wall," but also writes, "Before I built a wall I'd
ask to know/ What I was walling in or walling out." R. Frost,
Mending Wall, The New Oxford Book of American Verse 395-396 (R.
Ellmann ed. 1976).
Finally, I note that the cases the dissent cites are
distinguishable from the one before us.
Sampeyreac v.
United States, 7 Pet. 222 (1833), considered a law similar
to § 27 A(b) (it reopened a set of closed judgments in fraud
cases), but the Court did not reach the here relevant issue.
Rather, the Court rested its conclusion upon the fact that
Sampeyreac was not "a real person," while conceding that, were he
real, the case "might present a different question."
Id., at
238
239. Freeborn v.
Smith, 2 Wall. 160 (1865), which
involved
246
an Article I court, upheld a law that applied to all cases
pending on appeal (in the Supreme Court) from the territory of
Nevada, irrespective of the causes of action at issue or which
party was seeking review. See
id., at 162. That law had
generality, a characteristic that helps to avoid the problem of
legislatively singling out a few individuals for adverse treatment.
See
Chadha, 462 U. S., at 966 (Powell, J., concurring in
judgment). Neither did
United States v.
Sioux Nation,
448 U. S. 371
(1980), involve legislation that adversely treated a few
individuals. Rather, it permitted the reopening of a case against
the United States. See
id., at 391.
Because the law before us embodies risks of the very sort that
our Constitution's "separation-of-powers" prohibition seeks to
avoid, and because I can find no offsetting legislative safeguards
that normally offer assurances that minimize those risks, I agree
with the Court's conclusion and I join its judgment.
JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins,
dissenting.
On December 19, 1991, Congress enacted § 27 A of the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U. S. C. § 78aa-1 (1988 ed., Supp. V)
(hereinafter 1991 amendment), to remedy a flaw in the limitations
rule this Court announced on June 20, 1991, in
Lampf, Pleva,
Lipkind, Prupis &
Petigrow v.
Gilbertson,
501 U. S. 350
(1991). In
Lampf the Court replaced the array of state
statutes of limitations that had governed shareholder actions under
the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U. S. C. § 78j(b), and Rule
10b-5, 17 CFR 240.10b-5 (1994) (hereinafter 10b-5 actions), with a
uniform federal limitations rule. Congress found only one flaw in
the Court's new rule: its failure to exempt pending cases from its
operation. Accordingly, without altering the prospective effect of
the
Lampfrule, the 1991 amendment remedied its flaw by
providing that
pre-Lampflaw should determine the limitations
period applicable to all cases that had
247
been pending on June 20, 1991-both those that remained pending
on December 19, 1991, when § 27 A was enacted, and those that
courts dismissed between June 20 and December 19, 1991. Today the
Court holds that the 1991 amendment violates the Constitution's
separation of powers because, by encompassing the dismissed claims,
it requires courts to reopen final judgments in private civil
actions.
Section 27 A is a statutory amendment to a rule of law announced
by this Court. The fact that the new rule announced in
Lampf
was a product of judicial, rather than congressional, lawmaking
should not affect the separation-ofpowers analysis. We would have
the same issue to decide had Congress enacted the
Lampfrule
but, as a result of in advertence or perhaps a scrivener's error,
failed to exempt pending cases, as is customary when limitations
periods are shortened. 1 In my opinion, if Congress had
retroactively restored rights its own legislation had inadvertently
or unfairly impaired, the remedial amendment's failure to exclude
dismissed cases from the benefited class would not make it invalid.
The Court today faces a materially identical situation and, in my
view, reaches the wrong result.
Throughout our history, Congress has passed laws that allow
courts to reopen final judgments. Such laws characteristically
apply to judgments entered before as well as after their enactment.
When they apply retroactively, they may raise serious due process
questions,2 but the Court
lOur decisions prior to
Lamp! consistently held that
retroactive application of new, shortened limitations periods would
violate "fundamental notions of justified reliance and due
process."
Lamp!, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis &
Petigrow v.
Gilbertson, 501 U. S. 350, 371 (1991)
(O'CONNOR, J., dissenting); see,
e. g., Chevron Oil Co. v.
Huson, 404 U.
S. 97 (1971);
Saint Francis College v.
Al-Khazraji, 481 U. S. 604 (1987).
2 Because the Court finds a separation-of-powers violation, it
does not reach respondents' alternative theory that §27A(b) denied
them due process under the Fifth Amendment, a theory the Court of
Appeals did not identify as an alternative ground for its holding.
In my judgment, the statute easily survives a due process
challenge. Section 27A(b) is ration-
248
has never invalidated such a law on separation-of-powers grounds
until today. Indeed, only last Term we recognized Congress' ample
power to enact a law that "in effect 'restored' rights that [a
party] reasonably and in good faith thought he possessed before the
surprising announcement" of a Supreme Court decision.
Rivers
v.
Roadway Express, Inc., 511 U. S. 298, 310 (1994)
(discussing
Frisbie v.
Whitney, 9 Wall. 187 (1870)).
We conditioned our unambiguous restatement of the proposition that
"Congress had the
power to enact legislation that had the
practical effect of restoring the status quo retroactively," 511 U.
S., at 310, only on Congress' clear expression of its intent to do
so.
A large class of investors reasonably and in good faith thought
they possessed rights of action before the surprising announcement
of the
Lampfrule on June 20, 1991. When it enacted the 1991
amendment, Congress clearly expressed its intent to restore the
rights
Lampf had denied the aggrieved class. Section 27 A
comported fully with
Rivers and with other precedents in
which we consistently have recognized Congress' power to enact
remedial statutes that set aside classes of final judgments. The
only remarkable feature of
ally related to a legitimate public purpose. Cf.,
e. g.,
Concrete Pipe & Products of Cal., Inc. v.
Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern Cal.,
508 U. S. 602,
636-641 (1993). Given the existence of statutes and rules, such as
Rule 60(b), that allow courts to reopen apparently "final"
judgments in various circumstances, see
infra, at 256-259,
respondents cannot assert an inviolable "vested right" in the
District Court's post
Lampfdismissal of petitioners' claims.
In addition, §27A(b) did not upset any "settled expectations" of
respondents. Cf.
Landgraf v.
USI Film Products,
511 U. S. 244,
266 (1994). In
Landgraf, we concluded that Congress did not
intend § 102 of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, 42 U. S. C. § 1981a
(1988 ed., Supp. V), to apply retroactively because retroactive
application would have placed a new legal burden on past conduct.
511 U. S., at 280286. Before 1991 no one could have relied either
on the yet-to-beannounced rule in
Lampf or on the Court's
unpredictable decision to apply that rule retroactively. All of the
reliance interests that ordinarily support a presumption against
retroactivity militate in favor of allowing retroactive application
of § 27 A.
249
this enactment is the fact that it remedied a defect in a new
judge-made rule rather than in a statute.
The familiar history the Court invokes, involving colonial
legislatures' ad hoc decisions of individual cases, "'unfettered by
rules,'"
ante, at 220 (quoting Vermont State Papers
17791786, p. 540 (Slade ed. 1823)), provides no support for its
holding. On the contrary, history and precedent demonstrate that
Congress may enact laws that establish both substantive rules and
procedures for reopening final judgments. When it enacted the 1991
amendment to the
Lamp! rule, Congress did not encroach on
the judicial power. It decided neither the merits of any 10b-5
claim nor even whether any such claim should proceed to decision on
the merits. It did provide that the rule governing the timeliness
of 10b-5 actions pending on June 19, 1991, should be the
pre-Lamp! statute of limitations, and it also established a
procedure for Article III courts to apply in determining whether
any dismissed case should be reinstated. Congress' decision to
extend that rule and procedure to 10b-5 actions dismissed during
the brief period between this Court's law-changing decision in
Lamp! and Congress' remedial action is not a sufficient
reason to hold the statute unconstitutional.
I
Respondents conducted a public offering of common stock in 1983.
Petitioners, suing on behalf of themselves and other purchasers of
the stock, filed a 10b-5 action in 1987 in the United States
District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, alleging
violations of substantive federal rules that had been in place
since 1934. Respondents moved to dismiss the complaint as untimely
because petitioners had filed it more than three years after the
events in dispute. At that time, settled law in Kentucky and
elsewhere in the United States directed federal courts to determine
statutes of limitations applicable to 10b-5 actions by reference
to
250
state law.3 The relevant Kentucky statute provided a 3year
limitations period,4 which petitioners contended ran from the time
the alleged fraud was or should have been discovered. A Magistrate
agreed with petitioners and recommended denial of respondents'
motion to dismiss, but by 1991 the District Court had not yet ruled
on that issue. The factual question whether petitioners should have
discovered respondents' alleged 10b-5 violations more than three
years before they filed suit remained open for decision by an
Article III judge on June 20, 1991.
On that day, this Court's decision in
Lamp! changed the
law. The Court concluded that every 10b-5 action is time barred
unless brought within three years of the alleged violation and one
year of its discovery. Moreover, it applied that novel rule to
pending cases. As JUSTICE O'CONNOR pointed out in her dissent, the
Court held the plaintiffs' suit "time barred under a limitations
period that did not exist before," a holding that "depart[ed]
drastically from our established practice and infiict[ed] an
injustice on the [plaintiffs]."
Lampf, 501 U. S., at 369.5
The inequitable consequences of
Lamp! reached beyond the
parties to that case,
3 "Federal judges have 'borrowed' state statutes of limitations
because they were directed to do so by the Congress of the United
States under the Rules of Decision Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1652."
Lamp!, 501 U. S., at 367, n. 2 (STEVENS, J., dissenting)
(citations omitted); see,
e. g., Stull v.
Bayard,
561 F.2d
429, 431-432
(CA2 1977), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 1035
(1978);
Roberts v.
Magnetic Metals Co., 611 F.2d
450, 456
(CA3 1979);
Robuck v.
Dean Witter
&
Co., 649 F.2d
641, 644
(CA9 1980) (borrowing state statutes of
limitations for 10b-5 actions).
4 See Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 292.480(3) (Michie 1988).
5 The
Lamp! opinion drew two other dissents. JUSTICE
KENNEDY, joined by JUSTICE O'CONNOR, would have adopted a different
substantive limitations rule. See 501 U. S., at 374. JUSTICE SOUTER
and I would have adhered to "four decades of ... settled law" and
maintained the existing regime until Congress enacted a new federal
statute of limitations.
Id., at 366-367 (STEVENS, J.,
dissenting). No one dissented from the proposition that a uniform
federal limitations period would be wise policy.
251
injuring a large class of litigants that includes petitioners.
Without resolving the factual issue that would have determined the
timeliness of petitioners' complaint before
Lampf, the
District Court dismissed the instant action as untimely under the
new limitations period dictated by this Court. Because
Lampfhad deprived them of any nonfrivolous basis for an
appeal, petitioners acquiesced in the dismissal, which therefore
became final on September 12, 1991.
Congress responded to
Lampfby passing §27A, which became
effective on December 19, 1991. The statute changed the substantive
limitations law, restoring the
pre-Lampflimitations rule for
two categories of 10b-5 actions that had been pending on June 19,
1991. Subsection (a) of § 27 A applies to cases that were still
pending on December 19, 1991. The Courts of Appeals have uniformly
upheld the constitutionality of that subsection,6 and its validity
is not challenged in this case. Subsection (b) applies to actions,
like the instant case, that (1) were dismissed after June 19, 1991,
and (2) would have been timely under the
pre-Lampf regime.
This subsection authorized the district courts to reinstate
dismissed cases if the plaintiff so moved within 60 days after the
effective date of § 27A. The amendment was not selfexecuting:
Unless the plaintiff both filed a timely motion for reinstatement
and then satisfied the court that the complaint had been timely
filed under applicable
pre-Lampf law, the dismissal would
remain in effect.
In this case petitioners made the required showing, but the
District Court refused to reinstate their case. Instead,
6 See Cooperativa de Ahorro y Credito Aguada v. Kidder, Peabody
& Co.,
993 F.2d
269 (CA1), cert. pending, No. 93-564; Axel Johnson Inc. v.
Arthur Andersen & Co.,
6 F.3d
78 (CA2 1993); Cooke v. Manufactured Homes, Inc.,
998 F.2d
1256 (CA4 1993); Berning v. A. G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.,
990 F.2d
272 (CA7 1993); Gray v. First Winthrop Corp.,
989 F.2d
1564 (CA9 1993); Anixter v. Home-Stake Production Co.,
977 F.2d
1533 (CAlO 1992), cert. denied sub nom. Dennler v. Trippet, 507
U. S. 1029 (1993); Henderson v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.,
971 F.2d
1567 (CAll 1992), cert. denied, 510 U. S. 828 (1993).
252
it held § 27 A(b) unconstitutional. 789 F. Supp. 231 (ED Ky.
1992). The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, contrary to an
earlier decision of the Fifth Circuit, affirmed.
1 F.3d
1487 (1993).
II
Aside from § 27 A(b), the Court claims to "know of no instance
in which Congress has attempted to set aside the final judgment of
an Article III court by retroactive legislation."
Ante, at
230. In fact, Congress has done so on several occasions. Section 27
A(b) is part of a remedial statute. As early as 1833, we recognized
that a remedial statute authorizing the reopening of a final
judgment after the time for appeal has expired is "entirely
unexceptionable" even though it operates retroactively. "It has
been repeatedly decided in this court, that the retrospective
operation of such a law forms no objection to it. Almost every law,
providing a new remedy, affects and operates upon causes of action
existing at the time the law is passed."
Sampeyreac v.
United States, 7 Pet. 222, 239 (1833). We have upheld
remedial statutes that carried no greater cause for
separation-of-powers concerns than does § 27 A(b); others have
provoked no challenges. In contrast, the colonial directives on
which the majority relies were nothing like remedial statutes.
The remedial 1830 law we construed in
Sampeyreac strongly
resembled § 27 A(b): It authorized a class of litigants to reopen
claims, brought under an 1824 statute, that courts had already
finally adjudicated. The 1824 statute authorized proceedings to
establish title to certain lands in the State of Missouri and the
territory of Arkansas. It provided for an appeal to this Court
within one year after the entry of the judgment or decree, "and
should no appeal be taken, the judgment or decree of the district
court shall in like manner be final and conclusive." 7 Pet., at
238. In 1827 the Arkansas Territorial Court entered a decree in
favor of one Sampeyreac, over the objection of the United States
that the nominal plaintiff was a fictitious person. Because no
appeal
253
was taken from that decree, it became final in 1828. In 1830
Congress passed a special statute authorizing the Arkansas court to
reopen any decree entered under the 1824 statute if, prior to July
1, 1831, the United States filed a bill of review alleging that the
decree had been based on forged evidence of title. The United
States filed such a bill and obtained a reversal of the 1827 decree
from the Arkansas court.
The successors in interest of the fictitious Mr. Sampeyreac
argued in this Court that the Arkansas court should not have
entertained the Government's bill of review because the 1830
statute "was the exercise of a judicial power, and it is no answer
to this objection, that the execution of its provisions is given to
a court. The legislature of the union cannot use such a power."
Id., at 229. We categorically rejected that argument: "The
law of 1830 is in no respect the exercise of judicial powers."
Id., at 239. Of course, as the majority notes,
ante,
at 232-233, the particular decree at stake in
Sampeyreac had
issued not from an Article III court but from a territorial court.
However, our opinion contains no suggestion that Congress' power to
authorize the reopening of judgments entered by the Arkansas court
was any broader than its power to authorize the reopening of
judgments entered under the same statute by the United States
District Court in Missouri. Moreover, the relevant judicial power
that the 1830 statute arguably supplanted was this Court's Article
III appellate jurisdiction-which, prior to the 1830 enactment,
provided the only avenue for review of the trial courts'
judgments.
Similarly, in
Freeborn v.
Smith, 2 Wall. 160
(1865), the Court rejected a challenge to an Act of Congress that
removed an accidental impediment to the exercise of our appellate
jurisdiction. When Congress admitted Nevada into the Union as a
State in March 1864, ch. 36, 13 Stat. 30, it neglected to provide
for the disposition of pending appeals from final judgments
previously entered by the Supreme Court of
254
the Nevada Territory. Accordingly, the
Freeborn
defendants in error moved to dismiss a writ of error to the
territorial court on the ground that we had no power to decide the
case. At the suggestion of plaintiffs in error, the Court deferred
ruling on the motion until after February 27, 1865, when Congress
passed a special statute that authorized the Court to decide this
and similar cases.7 Defendants in error renewed their motion,
arguing that Congress could not reopen judgments that were already
final and unreviewable because Congress was not competent to
exercise judicial power.
Defendants in error argued that, "[i]f it be possible for a
right to attach itself to a judgment, it has done so here, and
there could not be a plainer case of an attempt to destroy it by
legislative action." 2 Wall., at 165. The Court, however, noted
that the omission in the 1864 statute had left the case "in a very
anomalous situation,"
id., at 174, and that passage of the
later statute "was absolutely necessary to remove an impediment in
the way of any legal proceeding in the case."
Id., at 175.
It concluded that such "acts are of a remedial character, and are
peculiar subjects of legislation. They are not liable to the
imputation of being assumptions of judicial power."
Ibid. As
in
Sampeyreac, although
Freeborn in-
7 The Act provided, in part:
"That all cases of appeal or writ of error heretofore prosecuted
and now pending in the supreme court of the United States, upon any
record from the supreme court of the Territory of Nevada, may be
heard and determined by the supreme court of the United States, and
the mandate of execution or of further proceedings shall be
directed by the supreme court of the United States to the district
court of the United States for the district of Nevada, or to the
supreme court of the State of Nevada, as the nature of said appeal
or writ of error may require, and each of these courts shall be the
successor of the supreme court of Nevada Territory as to all such
cases, with full power to hear and determine the same, and to award
mesne or final process thereon ....
Provided, That said
appeals shall be prosecuted and said writs of errors sued out at
any time before the first day of July, eighteen hundred and
sixty-six." Ch. 64, §8, 13 Stat. 441.
255
volved the review of a judgment entered by a territorial court,
the "judicial power" to which the opinion referred was this Court's
Article III appellate jurisdiction. If Congress may enact a law
authorizing this Court to reopen decisions that we previously
lacked power to review, Congress must have the power to let
district courts reopen their own judgments.
Also apposite is
United States v.
Sioux Nation,
448 U. S. 371
(1980), which involved the Sioux Nation's longstanding claim that
the Government had in 1877 improperly abrogated the treaty by which
the Sioux had held title to the Black Hills. The Sioux first
brought their claim under a special 1920 jurisdictional statute.
The Court of Claims dismissed the suit in 1942, holding that the
1920 Act did not give the court jurisdiction to consider the
adequacy of the compensation the Government had paid in 1877.
Congress passed a new jurisdictional statute in 1946, and in 1950
the Sioux brought a new action. In 1975 the Court of Claims,
although acknowledging the merit of the Sioux's claim, held that
the res judicata effect of the 1942 dismissal barred the suit. In
response, Congress passed a statute in 1978 that authorized the
Court of Claims to take new evidence and instructed it to consider
the Sioux's claims on the merits, disregarding res judicata. The
Sioux finally prevailed. We held that the 1978 Act did not violate
the separation of powers. 448 U. S., at 407.
The Court correctly notes, see
ante, at 230-231, and n.
5, that our opinion in
Sioux Nation prominently discussed
precedents establishing Congress' power to waive the res judicata
effect of judgments against the United States. We never suggested,
however, that those precedents sufficed to overcome the
separation-of-powers objections raised against the 1978 Act.
Instead, we made extensive comments about the propriety of
Congress' action that were as necessary to our holding then as they
are salient to the Court's analysis today. In passing the 1978 Act,
we held, Congress
256
"only was providing a forum so that a new judicial review of the
Black Hills claim could take place. This review was to be based on
the facts found by the Court of Claims after reviewing all the
evidence, and an application of generally controlling legal
principles to those facts. For these reasons, Congress was not
reviewing the merits of the Court of Claims' decisions, and did not
interfere with the finality of its judgments.
"Moreover, Congress in no way attempted to prescribe the outcome
of the Court of Claims' new review of the merits." 448 U. S., at
407.
Congress observed the same boundaries in enacting § 27A(b).
Our opinions in
Sampeyreac, Freeborn, and
Sioux
Nation correctly characterize statutes that specify new grounds
for the reopening of final judgments as remedial. Moreover, these
precedents correctly identify the unremarkable nature of the
legislative power to enact remedial statutes. "[A]cts ... of a
remedial character ... are the peculiar subjects of legislation.
They are not liable to the imputation of being assumptions of
judicial power."
Freeborn, 2 Wall., at 175. A few
contemporary examples of such statutes will suffice to demonstrate
that they are ordinary products of the exercise of legislative
power.
The most familiar remedial measure that provides for reopening
of final judgments is Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure. That Rule both codified common-law grounds for relieving
a party from a final judgment and added an encompassing reference
to "any other reason justifying relief from the operation of the
judgment."s Not a
8The full text of Rule 60(b) provides:
"On motion and upon such terms as are just, the court may
relieve a party or a party's legal representative from a final
judgment, order, or proceeding for the following reasons: (1)
mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect; (2) newly
discovered evidence which by due diligence could not have been
discovered in time to move for a new trial under Rule 59(b); (3)
fraud (whether heretofore denominated intrinsic or extrinsic),
257
single word in its text suggests that it does not apply to
judgments entered prior to its effective date. On the contrary, the
purpose of the Rule, its plain language, and the traditional
construction of remedial measures all support construing it to
apply to past as well as future judgments. Indeed, because the Rule
explicitly abolished the commonlaw writs it replaced, an unintended
gap in the law would have resulted if it did not apply
retroactively.9
misrepresentation, or other misconduct of an adverse party; (4)
the judgment is void; (5) the judgment has been satisfied,
released, or discharged, or a prior judgment upon which it is based
has been reversed or otherwise vacated, or it is no longer
equitable that the judgment should have prospective application; or
(6) any other reason justifying relief from the operation of the
judgment. The motion shall be made within a reasonable time, and
for reasons (1), (2), and (3) not more than one year after the
judgment, order, or proceeding was entered or taken. A motion under
this subdivision (b) does not affect the finality of a judgment or
suspend its operation. This rule does not limit the power of a
court to entertain an independent action to relieve a party from a
judgment, order, or proceeding, or to grant relief to a defendant
not actually personally notified as provided in Title 28, U. S. C.
§ 1655, or to set aside a judgment for fraud upon the court. Writs
of coram nobis, coram vobis, audita querela, and bills of review
and bills in the nature of a bill of review, are abolished, and the
procedure for obtaining any relief from a judgment shall be by
motion as prescribed in these rules or by an independent
action."
This Court adopted the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and
submitted them to Congress as the Rules Enabling Act required. They
became effective after Congress adjourned without altering them.
See generally 308 U. S. 647 (letter of transmittal to Congress,
Jan. 3, 1938).
9 In its criticism of this analysis of Rule 60(b), the majority
overstates our holdings on retroactivity in
Landgraf, 511 U.
S., at 280, and
Rivers v.
Roadway Express, Inc.,
511 U. S. 298
(1994). Our opinion in
Landgraf nowhere says "that statutes
do
not apply retroactively
unless Congress expressly
states that they do."
Ante, at 237. To the contrary, it says
that, "[w]hen ... the statute contains no such express command, the
court must determine whether the new statute would have retroactive
effect," an inquiry that requires "clear congressional
intent favoring such a result."
Landgraf, 511 U. S.,
at 280 (emphasis added); see also
id., at 273
275;
Rivers, 511 U. S., at 304-309. In the case of Rule 60(b), the
factors I have identified, taken together, support a finding of
clear congressional
258
Other examples of remedial statutes that resemble § 27 A include
the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act of 1940, 50 U. S. C.
App. §520(4), which authorizes members of the Armed Forces to
reopen judgments entered while they were on active duty; the
Handicapped Children's Protection Act of 1986,20 U. S. C. §
1415(e)(4)(B) (1988 ed. and Supp. V), which provided for recovery
of attorney's fees under the Education for All Handicapped Children
Act of 1975, 20 U. S. C. § 1411
et seq. (1988 ed. and Supp.
V); 10 and the federal habeas corpus statute, 28 U. S. C. § 2255,
which authorizes federal courts to reopen judgments of conviction.
The habeas statute, similarly to Rule 60(b), replaced a common-law
writ, see App. to H. R. Rep. No. 308, 80th Cong., 2d Sess., A180
(1947), and thus necessarily applied retroactively.ll State
statutes that authorize the reopening of various types of default
judgments 12 and judgments that became final before a party re-
intent. Moreover, neither
Landgraf nor
Rivers
"rejected" consideration of a statute's remedial purpose in
analyzing Congress' intent to apply the statute retroactively.
Compare
ante, at 237, with
Landgraf, 511 U. S., at
281-286, and n. 37, and
Rivers, 511 U. S., at 304-311.
10 When it enacted the Handicapped Children's Protection Act,
Congress overruled our contrary decision in
Smith v.
Robinson, 468
U. S. 992 (1984), by applying the Act retroactively to any
action either pending on or brought after July 4, 1984, the day
before we announced
Smith. See 100 Stat. 798. Accordingly, a
court has applied the Act retroactively to a case in which the
parties had entered into a consent decree prior to its enactment.
See
Counsel v.
Dow, 849 F.2d
731, 738-739
(CA2 1988). The Court's attempts to explain
away the retroactivity provision,
ante, at 235236, simply do
not comport with the plain language of the Act.
11 The Government also calls our attention to 28 U. S. C. §
1655, a statute that requires courts to reopen final
in rem
judgments upon entries of appearance by defendants who were not
personally served. See Brief for United States 24-25, and n. 17.
While that statute had only prospective effect, the Court offers no
reason why Congress could not pass a similar statute that would
apply retroactively to judgments entered under preexisting
procedures.
12See,
e. g., Del. Code Ann., Tit. 18, §4418
(1989); Fla. Stat. §631.734 (1984); N. Y. Ins. Law § 7717 (McKinney
Supp. 1995); 40 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 991.1716 (Supp. 1994).
259
ceived notice of their entry,13 as well as provisions for
motions to reopen based on newly discovered evidence,14 further
demonstrate the widespread acceptance of remedial statutes that
allow courts to set aside final judgments. As in the case of Rule
60(b), logic dictates that these statutes be construed to apply
retroactively to judgments that were final at the time of their
enactments. All of these remedial statutes announced generally
applicable rules of law as well as establishing procedures for
reopening final judgments.15
In contrast, in the examples of colonial legislatures' review of
trial courts' judgments on which today's holding rests, the
legislatures issued directives in individual cases without
purporting either to set forth or to apply any legal standard. Cf.
ante, at 219-225; see,
e. g., INS v.
Chadha, 462 U.
S. 919, 961-962 (1983) (Powell, J., concurring in judgment).
The principal compendium on which the Court relies,
ante, at
219, accurately describes these legislative directives:
"In these records, which are of the first quarter of the 18th
century, the provincial legislature will often be found acting in a
judicial capacity, sometimes trying causes in equity, sometimes
granting equity powers to some court of the common law for a
particular temporary purpose, and constantly granting appeals, new
trials, and other relief from judgments, on equitable
13 For example, a Virginia statute provides that, when a
pro
se litigant fails to receive notice of the trial court's entry
of an order, even after the time to appeal has expired, the trial
judge may within 60 days vacate the order and grant the party leave
to appeal. Va. Code Ann. §
8.01-428(C) (Supp. 1994).
14 See
Herrera v.
Collins, 506 U. S. 390, 410-411,
and nn. 8-11 (1993) (citing state statutes).
15 The Court offers no explanation of why the Constitution
should be construed to interpose an absolute bar against these
statutes' retroactive application. Under the Court's reasoning, for
example, an amendment that broadened the coverage of Rule 60(b)
could not apply to any inequitable judgments entered prior to the
amendment. The Court's rationale for this formalistic restriction
remains elusive.
260
grounds." Judicial Action by the Provincial Legislature of
Massachusetts, 15 Harv. L. Rev. 208, n. 1 (1902).
The Framers' disapproval of such a system of ad hoc legislative
review of individual trial court judgments has no bearing on
remedial measures such as Rule 60(b) or the 1991 amendment at issue
today. The history on which the Court relies provides no support
for its holding.
III
The lack of precedent for the Court's holding is not, of course,
a sufficient reason to reject it. Correct application of
separation-of-powers principles, however, confirms that the Court
has reached the wrong result. As our most recent major
pronouncement on the separation of powers noted, "we have never
held that the Constitution requires that the three branches of
Government 'operate with absolute independence.'"
Morrison
v.
Olson, 487
U. S. 654, 693-694 (1988) (quoting
United States v.
Nixon, 418 U.
S. 683, 707 (1974)). Rather, our jurisprudence reflects
"Madison's flexible approach to separation of powers."
Mistretta v.
United States, 488 U. S. 361, 380
(1989). In accepting Madison's conception rather than any "hermetic
division among the Branches,"
id., at 381, "we have upheld
statutory provisions that to some degree commingle the functions of
the Branches, but that pose no danger of either aggrandizement or
encroachment,"
id., at 382. Today's holding does not comport
with these ideals.
Section 27 A shares several important characteristics with the
remedial statutes discussed above. It does not decide the merits of
any issue in any litigation but merely removes an impediment to
judicial decision on the merits. The impediment it removes would
have produced inequity because the statute's beneficiaries did not
cause the impediment. It requires a party invoking its benefits to
file a motion within a specified time and to convince a court that
the statute entitles the party to relief. Most important, § 27 A(b)
specifies
261
both a substantive rule to govern the reopening of a class of
judgments-the
pre-Lamp! limitations rule-and a procedure for
the courts to apply in determining whether a particular motion to
reopen should be granted. These characteristics are
quintessentially legislative. They reflect Congress' fealty to the
separation of powers and its intention to avoid the sort of ad hoc
excesses the Court rightly criticizes in colonial legislative
practice. In my judgment, all of these elements distinguish § 27 A
from "judicial" action and confirm its constitutionality. A
sensible analysis would at least consider them in the balance.
Instead, the Court myopically disposes of § 27 A(b) by holding
that Congress has no power to "requir[e] an Article III court to
set aside a final judgment."
Ante, at 240. That holding must
mean one of two things. It could mean that Congress may not impose
a mandatory duty on a court to set aside a judgment even if the
court makes a particular finding, such as a finding of fraud or
mistake, that Congress has not made. Such a rule, however, could
not be correct. Although Rule 60(b), for example, merely authorizes
federal courts to set aside judgments after making appropriate
findings, Acts of Congress characteristically set standards that
judges are obligated to enforce. Accordingly, Congress surely could
add to Rule 60(b) certain instances in which courts
must
grant relief from final judgments if they make particular
findings-for example, a finding that a member of the jury accepted
a bribe from the prevailing party. The Court, therefore, must mean
to hold that Congress may not
unconditionally require an
Article III court to set aside a final judgment. That rule is both
unwise and beside the point of this case.
A simple hypothetical example will illustrate the practical
failings of the Court's new rule. Suppose Congress, instead of
endorsing the new limitations rule fashioned by the Court in
Lampf, had decided to return to the
pre-Lamp! regime
(or perhaps to enact a longer uniform statute). Subsection
262
(a) of § 27 A would simply have provided that the law in effect
prior to June 19, 1991, would govern the timeliness of all 10b-5
actions. In that event, subsection (b) would still have been
necessary to remedy the injustice caused by this Court's failure to
exempt pending cases from its new rule. In my judgment, the
statutory correction of the inequitable flaw in
Lamp! would
be appropriate remedial legislation whether or not Congress had
endorsed that decision's substantive limitations rule. The Court,
unfortunately, appears equally consistent: Even though the class of
dismissed 10b-5 plaintiffs in my hypothetical would have been
subject to the same substantive rule as all other 10b-5 plaintiffs,
the Court's reasoning would still reject subsection (b) as an
impermissible exercise of "judicial" power.
The majority's rigid holding unnecessarily hinders the
Government from addressing difficult issues that inevitably arise
in a complex society. This Court, for example, lacks power to
enlarge the time for filing petitions for certiorari in a civil
case after 90 days from the entry of final judgment, no matter how
strong the equities. See 28 U. S. C. § 2101(c). If an Act of God,
such as a flood or an earthquake, sufficiently disrupted
communications in a particular area to preclude filing for several
days, the majority's reasoning would appear to bar Congress from
addressing the resulting inequity. If Congress passed remedial
legislation that retroactively granted movants from the disaster
area extra time to file petitions or motions for extensions of time
to file, today's holding presumably would compel us to strike down
the legislation as an attack on the finality of judgments. Such a
ruling, like today's holding, would gravely undermine federal
courts' traditional power "to set aside a judgment whose
enforcement would work inequity."
Ante, at 234.16
16 The Court also appears to bar retroactive application of
changes in the criminal law. Its reasoning suggests that, for
example, should Congress one day choose to abolish the federal
death penalty, the new statute
263
Even if the rule the Court announces today were sound, it would
not control the case before us. In order to obtain the benefit of §
27 A, petitioners had to file a timely motion and persuade the
District Court they had timely filed their complaint under
pre-Lamp! law. In the judgment of the District Court,
petitioners satisfied those conditions. Congress reasonably could
have assumed, indeed must have expected, that some movants under §
27 A(b) would fail to do so. The presence of an important condition
that the District Court must find a movant to have satisfied before
it may reopen a judgment distinguishes § 27A from the unconditional
congressional directives the Court appears to forbid.
Moreover, unlike the colonial legislative commands on which the
Court bases its holding, § 27 A directed action not in "a civil
case,"
ante, at 223 (discussing
Calder v.
Bull,
3 Dall. 386 (1798)), but in a large category of civil casesP
The Court declares that a legislative direction to reopen a class
of 40 cases is 40 times as bad as a direction to reopen a single
final judgment because
"power is the object of the
separation-of-powers prohibition." See
ante, at 228. This
self-evident observation might be salient if § 27 A(b)
unconditionally commanded courts to reopen judgments even absent
findings that the complaints were timely under
pre-Lamp!
law. But Congress did not decide-and could not know how any court
would decide-the timeliness issue in any particu-
could not constitutionally save a death row inmate from
execution if his conviction had become final before the statute was
passed.
17 At the time Congress was considering the bill that became
§27A, a House Subcommittee reported that
Lamp! had resulted
in the dismissal of 15 cases, involving thousands of plaintiffs in
every State (of whom over 32,000 had been identified) and claims
totaling over $692.25 million. In addition, motions to dismiss
based on
Lamp! were then pending in 17 cases involving
thousands of plaintiffs in every State and claims totaling over
$4.578 billion. Hearing on H. R. 3185, before the Subcommittee on
Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Energy and
Commerce, 102d Cong., 1st Sess., 1-4 (1991).
264
lar case in the affected category. Congress, therefore, had no
way to identify which particular plaintiffs would benefit from § 27
A. It merely enacted a law that applied a substantive rule to a
class of litigants, specified a procedure for invoking the rule,
and left particular outcomes to individualized judicial
determinations-a classic exercise of legislative power.
"All we seek," affirmed a sponsor of § 27 A, "is to give the
victims [of securities fraud] a fair day in court." 18 A statute,
such as § 27 A, that removes an unanticipated and unjust impediment
to adjudication of a large class of claims on their merits poses no
danger of "aggrandizement or encroachment."
Mistretta, 488
U. S., at 382.19 This is particularly true for § 27 A in light of
Congress' historic primacy over statutes of limitations.20 The
statute contains several checks against the danger of congressional
overreaching. The Court in
Lamp! undertook a legislative
function. Essentially, it supplied a statute of limitations for
lOb-5 ac-
18137 Congo Rec. S18624 (Nov. 27, 1991) (statement of Sen.
Bryan).
19 Today's decision creates a new irony of judicial legislation.
A challenge to the constitutionality of § 27 A(a) could not turn on
the sanctity of final judgments. Section 27 A(a) benefits litigants
who had filed appeals that
Lampfrendered frivolous;
petitioners and other law-abiding litigants whose claims
Lampfrendered untimely had acquiesced in the dismissal of
their actions. By striking down §27A(b) on a ground that would
leave § 27 A(a) intact, the Court indulges litigants who protracted
proceedings but shuts the courthouse door to litigants who
proceeded with diligence and respect for the
Lampf
judgment.
20 "Statutes of limitation find their justification in necessity
and convenience rather than in logic. They represent expedients,
rather than principles .... They are by definition arbitrary, and
their operation does not discriminate between the just and the
unjust claim, or the voidable and unavoidable delay. They have come
into the law not through the judicial process but through
legislation. They represent a public policy about the privilege to
litigate .... [T]he history of pleas of limitation shows them to be
good only by legislative grace and to be subject to a relatively
large degree of legislative control."
Chase Securities Corp.
V.
Donaldson, 325 U. S. 304, 314 (1945)
(Jackson, J.) (footnote and citation omitted).
265
tions. The Court, however, failed to adopt the transition rules
that ordinarily attend alterations shortening the time to sue.
Congress, in § 27 A, has supplied those rules. The statute reflects
the ability of two coequal branches to cooperate in providing for
the impartial application of legal rules to particular disputes.
The Court's mistrust of such cooperation ill serves the separation
of powers.21
IV
The Court has drawn the wrong lesson from the Framers'
disapproval of colonial legislatures' appellate review of judicial
decisions. The Framers rejected that practice, not out of a
mechanistic solicitude for "final judgments," but because they
believed the impartial application of rules of law, rather
21 Although I agree with JUSTICE BREYER'S general approach to
the separation-of-powers issue, I believe he gives insufficient
weight to two important features of § 27 A. First, he fails to
recognize that the statute restored a pre-existing rule of law in
order to remedy the manifest injustice produced by the Court's
retroactive application of
Lampf The only "'substantial
deprivation'" Congress imposed on defendants was that properly
filed lawsuits proceed to decisions on the merits. Cf.
ante,
at 242 (BREYER, J., concurring in judgment) (quoting
INS v.
Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 962 (1983) (Powell, J., concurring in
judgment)). Second, he understates the class of defendants burdened
by § 27 A: He finds the statute underinclusive because it provided
no remedy for potential plaintiffs who may have failed to file
timely actions in reliance on
pre-Lampf limitations law, but
he denies the importance of § 27 A(a), which provided a remedy for
plaintiffs who appealed dismissals after
Lampf See
ante, at 243-244 (BREYER, J., concurring in judgment). The
coverage of §27A is coextensive with the retroactive application of
the general rule announced in
Lampf If Congress had enacted
a statute providing that the
Lampf rule should apply to all
cases filed after the statute's effective date and that the
pre-Lampf rule should apply to all cases filed before that
date, JUSTICE BREYER could not reasonably condemn the statute as
special legislation. The only difference between such a statute and
§27A is that §27A covered all cases pending on the date of
Lampf-June 20, 1991rather than on the effective date of the
statute-December 19, 1991. In my opinion, § 27 A has sufficient
generality to avoid the characteristics of a bill of attainder.
266
than the will of the majority, must govern the disposition of
individual cases and controversies. Any legislative interference in
the adjudication of the merits of a particular case carries the
risk that political power will supplant evenhanded justice, whether
the interference occurs before or after the entry of final
judgment. Cf.
United States v.
Klein, 13 Wall. 128
(1872);
Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409 (1792). Section 27 A(b)
neither commands the reinstatement of any particular case nor
directs any result on the merits. Congress recently granted a
special benefit to a single litigant in a pending civil rights
case, but the Court saw no need even to grant certiorari to review
that disturbing legislative favor.22 In an ironic counterpoint, the
Court today places a higher priority on protecting the Republic
from the restoration to a large class of litigants of the
opportunity to have Article III courts resolve the merits of their
claims.
"We must remember that the machinery of government would not
work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints."
Bain
Peanut Co. of Tex. v.
Pinson, 282 U. S. 499, 501 (1931)
(Holmes, J.). The three branches must cooperate in order to govern.
We should regard favorably, rather than with suspicious hostility,
legislation that enables the judiciary to overcome impediments to
the performance of its mission of administering justice
impartially, even when, as here, this Court has created the
impediment.23 Rigid rules often make good law, but judgments in
areas such as the review of potential conflicts among the three
coequal branches of the
22 See
Atonio v.
Wards Cove Packing Co., 513 U. S.
809 (1994); see also
Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 258 ("The
parties agree that § 402(b) [of the Civil Rights Act of 1991] was
intended to exempt a single disparate impact lawsuit against the
Wards Cove Packing Company").
23 Of course, neither the majority nor I would alter its
analysis had Congress, rather than the Court, enacted the
Lampfrule without any exemption for pending cases, then
later tried to remedy such unfairness by enacting § 27 A. Thus, the
Court's attribution of § 27 A to "the legislature's genuine
conviction (supported by all the law professors in the land) that
[Lampf] was wrong,"
ante, at 228, is quite beside the
point.
267
Federal Government partake of art as well as science. That is
why we have so often reiterated the insight of Justice Jackson:
"The actual art of governing under our Constitution does not and
cannot conform to judicial definitions of the power of any of its
branches based on isolated clauses or even single Articles torn
from context. While the Constitution diffuses power the better to
secure liberty, it also contemplates that practice will integrate
the dispersed powers into a workable government. It enjoins upon
its branches separateness but interdependence, autonomy but
reciprocity." Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.
v. Sawyer, 343
U. S. 579, 635 (1952) (concurring opinion).
We have the authority to hold that Congress has usurped a
judicial prerogative, but even if this case were doubtful I would
heed Justice Iredell's admonition in
Calder v.
Bull,
3 Dall., at 399, that "the Court will never resort to that
authority, but in a clear and urgent case." An appropriate regard
for the interdependence of Congress and the judiciary amply
supports the conclusion that § 27 A(b) reflects constructive
legislative cooperation rather than a usurpation of judicial
prerogatives.
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
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