Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 23.0

18 

SEC v. JARKESY 

Opinion of the Court 

From the beginning we have emphasized one point: “To
avoid misconstruction upon so grave a subject, we think it 
proper  to  state  that  we  do  not  consider  congress  can  . . . 
withdraw from judicial cognizance any matter which, from 
its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law, or in
equity, or admiralty.”  Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284.  We 
have never embraced the proposition that “practical” con-
siderations alone can justify extending the scope of the pub-
lic  rights  exception  to  such  matters.  Stern,  564  U. S.,  at 
501.  “[E]ven  with  respect  to  matters  that  arguably  fall 
within the scope of the ‘public rights’ doctrine, the presump-
tion is in favor of Article III courts.”  Northern Pipeline Con-
str.  Co.,  458  U. S.,  at  69,  n. 23  (plurality  opinion)  (citing 
Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U. S. 530, 548–549, and n. 21 
(1962) (plurality opinion)).  And for good reason: “Article III
could neither serve its purpose in the system of checks and 
balances nor preserve the integrity of judicial decisionmak-
ing if the other branches of the Federal Government could 
confer the Government’s ‘judicial Power’ on entities outside 

—————— 
no foothold), nor in the ratification history (where again it would find no
support), nor in a careful, category-by-category analysis of underlying le-
gal principles of the sort performed by Murray’s Lessee (which it does not 
attempt),  nor  even  in  a  case-specific  functional  analysis  (also  not  at-
tempted).  Instead, the dissent extrapolates from the outcomes in cases 
concerning unrelated applications of the public rights exception and from 
one opinion, Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety and Health Review 
Comm’n, 430 U. S. 442 (1977).  The result is to blur the distinctions our 
cases have drawn in favor of the legally unsound principle that just be-
cause the Government may extract civil penalties in administrative tri-
bunals in some contexts, it must always be able to do so in all contexts. 
The dissent also appeals to practice, ignoring that the statute Jarkesy
and Patriot28 have been prosecuted under is barely over a decade old.  It 
is also unclear how practice could transmute a private right into a public 
one,  or  how  the  absence  of legal  challenges  brought  by  one  generation
could waive the individual rights of the next.  Practice may be probative
when it reflects the settled institutional understandings of the branches. 
That  case  is  far  weaker  when  the  rights  of  individuals  are  directly  at 
stake.