Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 53.0

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

21 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

12  (emphasis  added).  But  the  dissent’s  approach  to  our
precedents is like a picky child at the dinner table.  It se-
lects  only  a  small  handful  while  leaving  much  else  un-
touched.  To start, the dissent lingers briefly on  Murray’s 
Lessee—but  not  long  enough  to  explain  the  opinion’s  con-
ception of Article III, due process, or the extended historical 
inquiry that led the Court to conclude the collection of rev-
enue concerned a public right.  See post, at 9–10; supra, at 
8, 10–14. 

The 19th century behind it (for it does not trouble with 
the founding era), the dissent turns to Oceanic Steam Nav. 
Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U. S. 320 (1909).  Drawing on that 
decision,  the  dissent  contends  that  “Congress  [has]  rou-
tinely  ‘impose[d]  appropriate  obligations’ ”  by  statute  and
given  “ ‘executive  officers  the  power  to  enforce’ ”  them 
“ ‘without  the  necessity  of  invoking  the  judicial  power.’ ”  
Post, at 11 (quoting Stranahan, 214 U. S., at 339).  Notably
absent from the dissent’s account, however, is the decision’s 
discussion of Congress’s long-recognized and extensive au-
thority over the field of immigration, the area of law at issue 
there.  See id., at 339.  Unmentioned, too, is Stranahan’s 
explanation  that  what  links  immigration  to  other  public 
rights  like  “tariff[s],  . . .  internal  revenue,  taxation,”  and 
“foreign  commerce”  is  that,  “ ‘from  the  beginning[,]  Con-
gress has exercised a plenary power’ ” over them “because 
they all relate to subjects peculiarly within the authority of
the legislative department.”  Id., at 334, 339. 

Really, one has to wonder:  If the public rights exception 
is as broad and unqualified as the dissent asserts, why did 
our predecessors bother to discuss history or Congress’s pe-
culiar powers when it comes to revenue and immigration?
Why didn’t the Court simply announce the rule the dissent 
would have us announce today:  that our Constitution does 
not stand in the way of “agency adjudications of statutory 
claims . . . brought by the Government in its sovereign ca-