Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1434_ancf.pdf
Page Number: 36.0

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

9 

Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

Curiae 6 (Congress sought “to preserve the independence of
those conducting inter partes review”); Brief for US Inven-
tor  Inc.  as  Amicus  Curiae  22  (“[I]t  is  plainly  evident  that 
Congress would not have enacted an APJ patentability trial 
system  that  was  more  political  than  the  one  they  did  en-
act”); Brief for Cato Institute et al. as Amici Curiae 20 (It
was a “conscious congressional decision to provide individ-
uals with the power to adjudicate (and often destroy) vested
patent  rights  with  some  level  of  independence”).  All  of 
which suggests that the majority’s severability analysis de-
fies,  rather  than  implements,  legislative  intent.  At  the 
least, it is surely plausible that, if faced with a choice be-
tween  giving  the  power  to  cancel  patents  to  political  offi-
cials or returning it to courts where it historically resided, 
a Congress so concerned with independent decisionmaking 
might have chosen the latter option.

My  point  here  isn’t  that  I  profess  any  certainty  about
what Congress would have chosen; it’s that I confess none.
Asking what a past Congress would have done if confronted 
with a contingency it never addressed calls for raw specu-
lation.  Speculation that, under traditional principles of ju-
dicial  remedies,  statutory  interpretation,  and  the  separa-
tion of powers, a court of law has no authority to undertake. 

* 
If  each  new  case  this  Court  entertains  about  the  AIA 
highlights more and more problems with the statute, for me 
the  largest  of  them  all  is  the  wrong  turn  we  took  in  Oil 
States.  There, the Court upheld the power of the Executive
Branch to strip vested property rights in patents despite a
long  history  in  this  country  allowing  only  courts  that  au-
thority.  See 584 U. S., at ___–___ (GORSUCH, J., dissenting) 
(slip op., at 8–10).  In the course of rejecting a separation-
of-powers challenge to this novel redistribution of historic 
authority, the Court acknowledged the possibility that per-
mitting politically motivated executive officials to “cancel”