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

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

17 

Opinion of the Court 

it, we explained that the assessment of tariffs did not im-
plicate Article III.  Id., at 458, 460–461. 

This Court has since held that certain other historic cat-
egories of adjudications fall within the exception, including 
relations with Indian tribes, see United States v. Jicarilla 
Apache Nation, 564 U. S. 162, 174 (2011), the administra-
tion  of  public  lands,  Crowell  v.  Benson,  285  U. S.  22,  51 
(1932),  and  the  granting  of  public  benefits  such  as  pay-
ments to veterans, ibid., pensions, ibid., and patent rights, 
United States v. Duell, 172 U. S. 576, 582–583 (1899). 

Our opinions governing the public rights exception have
not always spoken in precise terms.  This is an “area of fre-
quently  arcane  distinctions  and  confusing  precedents.” 
Thomas  v.  Union  Carbide  Agricultural  Products  Co.,  473 
U. S.  568,  583  (1985)  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted). 
The  Court  “has  not  ‘definitively  explained’  the  distinction
between public and private rights,” and we do not claim to 
do  so  today.   Oil  States  Energy  Services,  LLC  v.  Greene’s 
Energy Group, LLC, 584 U. S. 325, 334 (2018). 
  Nevertheless, since Murray’s Lessee, this Court has typi-
cally evaluated the legal basis for the assertion of the doc-
trine with care.  The public rights exception is, after all, an 
exception.  It has no textual basis in the Constitution and 
must therefore derive instead from background legal prin-
ciples.  Murray’s Lessee itself, for example, took pains to jus-
tify  the  application  of  the  exception  in  that  particular  in-
stance by explaining that it flowed from centuries-old rules 
concerning revenue collection by a sovereign.  See 18 How., 
at 281–285.  Without such close attention to the basis for 
each  asserted  application  of  the  doctrine,  the  exception 
would swallow the rule.2 

—————— 

2 The dissent would brush away these careful distinctions and unfurl a
new rule: that whenever Congress passes a statute “entitl[ing] the Gov-
ernment to civil penalties,” the defendant’s right to a jury and a neutral 
Article III adjudicator disappears.  See post, at 2 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, 
J.).  It bases this rule not in the constitutional text (where it would find