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Page Number: 48

16 

SEC v. JARKESY 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

To get there took a dash of fiction and a pinch of surmise. 
From time to time, the Court observed, judges appoint their 
own  special  “masters  and  commissioners”  to  prepare  re-
ports on fact issues or damages.  Id., at 51.  These reports
are nonbinding and “essentially . . . advisory.”  Ibid.  Judges
themselves  remain  the  decisionmakers.    In  Crowell,  the 
Court embraced the fiction that Executive Branch officials 
might similarly act as assistants or adjuncts to Article III 
courts.  And because judges often adopt the proposed find-
ings  of  their  masters  and  commissioners,  the  Court  sur-
mised, Article III posed no bar to Congress taking a further 
step and requiring judges to treat the findings of Executive 
Branch officials as essentially “final.”  Id., at 46.  “To hold 
otherwise,” the Court reasoned, “would be to defeat the ob-
vious purpose of the legislation”:  “to furnish a prompt, con-
tinuous, expert, and inexpensive method for dealing with a
class of questions of fact which are peculiarly suited to ex-
amination and determination by an administrative agency
specially assigned to that task.”  Ibid. 

Crowell  itself  only  went  so  far,  however.    The  case  fell 
within federal courts’ admiralty jurisdiction, and tribunals
sitting in admiralty in England and America alike had long
heard  certain  matters  falling  within  the  public  rights  ex-
ception.  See Culley, 601 U. S., at 398 (GORSUCH, J., concur-
ring).  In deciding those matters, courts had long tolerated 
some flexibility in procedures, had long restricted appellate 
review of factual findings, and had always proceeded with-
out a jury.  Crowell, 285 U. S., at 45, 53. 

Soon, though, none of that mattered.  Almost in a blink, 
the admiralty limitation was discarded, and more and more
agencies began assuming adjudicatory functions previously 
reserved for judges and juries, employing novel procedures 
that sometimes bore faint resemblance to those observed in 
court.  Along the way, prominent voices in and out of gov-
ernment expressed concern at this development.  Consider 
just two typical examples.  Were an agency endowed with