Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 98

38 

SEC v. JARKESY 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

and “it behooves the judiciary to apply a corrective by ex-
ceeding its own authority” through requiring civil-penalty 
claims  to  proceed  before  a  federal  jury.  Stranahan,  214 
U. S., at 340.  As this Court said over a century ago in this
public-rights context, that belief “mistakenly assumes that 
the  courts  can  alone  be  safely  intrusted  with  power,  and
that hence it is their duty to unlawfully exercise preroga-
tives which they have no right to exert, upon the assump-
tion  that  wrong  must  be  done  to  prevent  wrong  being  ac-
complished.”  Ibid. 

By giving respondents a jury trial, even one that the Con-
stitution does not require, the majority may think that it is 
protecting  liberty.    That  belief,  too,  is  deeply  misguided.
The  American  People  should  not  mistake  judicial  hubris
with the protection of individual rights.  Our first President 
understood this well.  In his parting words to the Nation,
he reminded us that a branch of Government arrogating for
itself the power of another based on perceptions of what, “in
one instance, may be the instrument of good . . . is the cus-
tomary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
Farewell  Address  (1796),  in  35  The  Writings  of  George
Washington 229 (J. Fitzpatrick ed. 1940) (footnote omitted). 
The majority today ignores that wisdom. 

Because the Court disregards its own precedent and its 
coequal partners in our tripartite system of Government, I
respectfully dissent.