Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 55

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

23 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

government ever go to court if it may more readily secure a 
win before its own employees?  The only attempt to mitigate
the havoc its rule would wreak comes when the dissent de-
clares that “ ‘[t]he public-rights doctrine does not extend to 
. . .  criminal  matters.’ ”    Post,  at  27,  n. 9.    But  the  dissent 
does not (and cannot) explain how that fits with all else it 
says.  If, as the dissent insists, a public right is any “new
right”  that  “belongs to the public and inheres in the Gov-
ernment in its sovereign capacity,” post, at 28, what could 
possibly better fit the description than the enforcement of 
new  criminal  laws?  See  Shinn  v.  Martinez  Ramirez,  596 
U. S.  366,  376  (2022)  (“The  power  to  convict  and  punish
criminals lies at the heart of the States’ residuary and invi-
olable sovereignty” (internal quotation marks omitted)).2 

All  but  admitting  its  view  has  no  support  in  “historical
practice dating back to the founding,” the dissent chastises
the Court for daring to rely on that practice to flesh out the
scope of the public rights exception.  Post, at 18.  It would 
be so much simpler, the dissent says, to adopt its rule per-
mitting the government to skirt oversight by judge and jury
alike whenever it enacts a new law.  And, true enough, “a 
principle that the government always wins surely would be 
simple for judges to implement.”  United States v. Rahimi, 
602 U. S. ___, ___ (2024) (GORSUCH, J., concurring) (slip op., 
at 6).  But looking to original meaning and historical prac-
tice  informing  it  is  exactly  how  this  Court  proceeds  in  so 

—————— 

2 The best the dissent can do is to observe that “Article III itself pre-
scribes that ‘[t]he trial of all Crimes . . . shall be by Jury.’ ”  Post, at 27, 
n. 9 (quoting §2, cl. 3).  That response might be reassuring if the dissent’s 
treatment of the Seventh Amendment didn’t supply a roadmap for work-
ing around it.  On the dissent’s telling, the Seventh Amendment can be
dispensed with at will:  It applies “only in judicial proceedings,” and not
whenever the government chooses to assign a matter to its own in-house
tribunals.  Post, at 5.  And under that logic, there is no apparent reason
why the government could not evade Article III’s jury-trial right just as
easily, simply by choosing to route criminal prosecutions through execu-
tive agencies.