Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 57.0

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

25 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

stands as an outlier in our jurisprudence—with no appar-
ent support in original meaning, at odds with prior prece-
dent,  and  inconsistent  with  later  precedent  as  well.  See 
ante, at 25, n. 4; Part III–B, supra.  Meanwhile, the Court’s 
alternative construction of Altas Roofing fits far more com-
fortably  with  all  those  legal  sources.    In  that  respect,  the
majority’s approach is of a piece with Granfinanciera’s sim-
ilar  approach  25  years  ago.  And,  more  broadly,  it  is  of  a 
piece with our usual practice of construing “loose language”
found in a prior judicial opinion in a way that better con-
forms  it  to  the  mainstream  of  our  precedents.    Groff  v. 
DeJoy,  600  U. S.  447,  474  (2023)  (SOTOMAYOR, J.,  concur-
ring).  As  the  dissenters  have  previously  acknowledged, 
that course is neither unusual nor at odds with stare decisis. 
See id., at 474–475; see also Brown v. Davenport, 596 U. S. 
118, 141 (2022) (“We neither expect nor hope that our suc-
cessors  will  comb  these  pages  for  stray  comments  and
stretch them beyond their context—all to justify an outcome 
inconsistent with this Court’s reasoning and judgments”).

Were there any doubt about the propriety of the Court’s 
treatment of Atlas Roofing, consider one more feature of the 
alternative the dissent proposes.  In defending the broadest 
possible construction of Atlas Roofing’s public rights discus-
sion, the dissent necessarily endorses that decision’s excep-
tionally narrow conception of the Seventh Amendment.  See 
post, at 6.  After all, as public rights expand, so too the jury-
trial right must contract.  Yet Atlas Roofing’s discussion of 
the  jury-trial  right,  no  less  than  its  discussion  of  public 
rights,  is  difficult  to  square  with  precedent  and  original 
meaning.

Recall that, from the start, the Seventh Amendment was 
understood to protect that right “not merely” in suits recog-
nized at common law, but in “all suits which are” of legal, 
as  opposed  to  “equity  [or]  admiralty[,]  jurisdiction.”    Par-
sons, 3 Pet., at 447 (emphasis added); see Part II–B, supra. 
This Court repeated that understanding of the Amendment