Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 62.0

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

15 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

1 
Start  with  a  look  to  how  our  predecessors  traditionally
understood the judicial role in disputes over a law’s mean-
ing.  From the Nation’s founding, they considered “[t]he in-
terpretation  of  the  laws”  in  cases  and  controversies  “the 
proper and peculiar province of the courts.”  The Federalist 
No. 78, p. 467 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton).  Perhaps
the  Court’s  most  famous  early  decision  reflected  exactly 
that view.  There, Chief Justice Marshall declared it “em-
phatically the province and duty of the judicial department 
to say what the law is.”  Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 177.  For 
judges  “have  neither  FORCE  nor  WILL  but  merely  judg-
ment”—and  an  obligation  to  exercise  that  judgment  inde-
pendently.  The Federalist No. 78, at 465.  No matter how 
“disagreeable  that  duty  may  be,”  this  Court  has  said,  a 
judge “is not at liberty to surrender, or to waive it.”  United 
States v. Dickson, 15 Pet. 141, 162 (1841) (Story, J.).  This 
duty  of  independent  judgment  is  perhaps  “the  defining
characteristi[c] of Article III judges.”  Stern v. Marshall, 564 
U. S. 462, 483 (2011).

To be sure, this Court has also long extended “great re-
spect” to the “contemporaneous” and consistent views of the 
coordinate branches about the meaning of a statute’s terms. 
Edwards’ Lessee v. Darby, 12 Wheat. 206, 210 (1827); see
also McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 401 (1819); Stu-
art v. Laird, 1 Cranch 299, 309 (1803).4  But traditionally,
that did not mean a court had to “defer” to any “reasonable” 

—————— 

4 Accord, National Lead Co. v. United States, 252 U. S. 140, 145–146 
(1920) (affording “great weight” to a “contemporaneous construction” by
the executive that had “been long continued”); Jacobs v. Prichard, 223 
U. S. 200, 214 (1912) (“find[ing] no ambiguity in the act” but also finding
“strength”  for  the  Court’s  interpretation  in  the  executive’s  “immediate 
and continued construction of the act”); Schell’s Executors v. Fauché, 138 
U. S. 562, 572 (1891) (treating as “controlling” a “contemporaneous con-
struction”  of  a  law  endorsed  “not  only  [by]  the  courts  but  [also  by]  the
departments”).