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UNITED STATES v. ARTHREX, INC. 

Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

not presume a power to “sever” and excise portions of stat-
utes in response to constitutional violations.  Instead, when 
the application of a statute violated the Constitution, courts
simply declined to enforce the statute in the case or contro-
versy at hand.  See Seila Law, 591 U. S., at ___ (THOMAS, 
J.,  dissenting  in  part)  (slip  op.,  at  15);  see  also  Walsh, 
N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 769.  I would follow that course today by 
identifying the constitutional violation, explaining our rea-
soning, and “setting aside” the PTAB decision in this case.
See Novartis AG v. Torrent Pharmaceuticals Ltd., 853 F. 3d 
1316, 1323–1324 (CA Fed. 2017) (holding that the standard 
in  5  U. S. C.  §706  governs  judicial  review  of  PTAB  deci-
sions).

The  Court  declines  to  follow  this  traditional  path.    In-
stead, it imagines that, if Congress had known its statutory 
scheme  was  unconstitutional,  it  would  have  preferred  to 
make the policy choice the Court makes for it today.  Faced 
with an unconstitutional combination of statutory instruc-
tions—providing for the exercise of executive power and its 
unreviewability—the Court chooses to act as if the provision
limiting  the  Director’s  ability  to  review  IPR  decisions 
doesn’t exist.  Having done that, the Court gifts the Director
a new power that he never before enjoyed, a power Congress 
expressly withheld from him and gave to someone else—the
power  to  cancel  patents  through  the  IPR  process.  Effec-
tively, the Court subtracts statutory powers from one set of
executive officials and adds them to another. 

While the Court has in relatively recent years proclaimed 
the power to proceed in this fashion, it has never paused to
explain how this “severance doctrine” comports with tradi-
tional  judicial  remedial  principles.    See  Barr  v.  American 
Assn. of Political Consultants, Inc., 591 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) 
(GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissent-
ing in part) (slip op., at 5).  Or with the fact that the judicial
power is limited to resolving discrete cases and controver-
sies.  Murphy  v.  National  Collegiate  Athletic  Assn.,  584