Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 54.0

22 

SEC v. JARKESY 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

pacity”?  Post, at 4.  The answer, of course, is that the Con-
stitution has never countenanced the dissent’s notion that 
the Executive is free to reassign virtually any civil case in 
which it is a party to its own tribunals where its own em-
ployees decide cases and inconvenient juries and traditional 
trial procedures go by the boards.

That my dissenting colleagues plow ahead anyway with
their remarkable conception of public rights is all the more
puzzling  considering  how  regularly  they  have  argued 
against that sort of sweeping concentration of governmen-
tal power.  The dissenters have recognized that a “lack of
standardized procedural safeguards” can leave government
enforcement schemes “vulnerable to abuse” and individuals 
subject to coercive “pressure from unchecked prosecutors.” 
Culley,  601  U. S.,  at  405,  407  (SOTOMAYOR, J.,  joined  by 
KAGAN  and  JACKSON, JJ.,  dissenting).    They  have  con-
tended that the Judiciary has an affirmative obligation to
supply “meaningful remedies,” trials before judges and ju-
ries  included,  even  when  “Congress  or  the  Executive  has 
[already] created a remedial process.”  Egbert v. Boule, 596 
U. S. 482, 524–525 (2022) (SOTOMAYOR, J., joined by, inter 
alios,  KAGAN, J.,  dissenting)  (internal  quotation  marks 
omitted;  emphasis  deleted).  And  like  most  every  current
Member  of  this  Court  at  one  time  or  another,  they  have 
acknowledged that the jury-trial right “stands as one of the
Constitution’s most vital protections against arbitrary gov-
ernment.”  United  States  v.  Haymond,  588  U. S.  634,  637 
(2019) (plurality opinion).

The dissent’s conception of public rights is so unqualified 
that it refuses to commit itself on the question whether even 
muted  forms  of  judicial  review—such  as  asking  executive
tribunals to muster “more than a mere scintilla” of evidence 
in support of their rulings—are constitutionally required in
the essentially unbounded class of cases that fall within its
conception  of  public  rights.  See  Part  I,  supra;  post,  at  8, 
n. 4.  Gone, too, is any role for the jury—for why would the