Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 47

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

15 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

ante, at 14–15.  But when it comes to the kind of civil-pen-
alty suit before us, that same history points in the opposite 
direction,  suggesting  actions  of  this  sort  belong  before  an
independent  judge,  a  jury,  and  decided  in  a  trial  that  ac-
cords  with  traditional  judicial  procedures.    Ante,  at  9–13; 
supra, at 11–12.  Just as SEC practices themselves largely 
reflected as recently as 2010. 

B 
If all that’s so, why might the government feel comforta-
ble invoking the public rights exception?  To be fair, much 
of it may have to do with this Court.  Some of our past deci-
sions  have  allowed  the  government  to  chip  away  at  the
courts’  historically  exclusive  role  in  adjudicating  private
rights—and juries’ accompanying role in that adjudication.
This process began, of all places, in an admiralty case. 

In Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22 (1932), this Court faced
a constitutional challenge to the Longshoremen’s and Har-
bor Workers’ Compensation Act of 1927.  The Act directed 
employers to compensate employees for injuries occurring 
at sea.  44 Stat. 1426.  The law further assigned primary 
responsibility for deciding liability disputes to an Executive
Branch  official,  the  deputy  commissioner  of  the  United 
States  Employees’  Compensation  Commission. 
Id.,  at 
  The  Court 
1435–1437;  Crowell,  285  U. S.,  at  42–43.
acknowledged that this regime empowered the deputy com-
missioner to decide in the first instance the monetary “lia-
bility of one individual to another.”  Id., at 51.  The Court 
recognized  that  this  amounted  to  a  classic  “private  right”
suit of the kind traditionally tried in court.  Ibid.  The Court 
even conceded that, under the law, the factual “findings of
the deputy commissioner, supported by evidence and within
the  scope  of  his  authority,  shall  be  final”:  An  Article  III 
court could not review the facts anew.  Id., at 46.  But the 
Court upheld the scheme and its limited judicial review an-
yway.