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4 

UZUEGBUNAM v. PRECZEWSKI 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

lesser  extent)  our  cases  require  that  federal  courts  open 
their  doors  to  any  plaintiff  who  asks  for  a  dollar.  I  part
ways with the Court regarding both the framework it ap-
plies and the result it reaches.

Begin with the framework.  The Court’s initial premise is
that we must “look to the forms of relief awarded at common 
law” in order to decide “whether nominal damages can re-
dress a past injury.”  Ante, at 4.  Because the Court finds 
that  “nominal  damages  were  available  at  common  law  in 
analogous  circumstances”  to  the  ones  before  us,  it  “con-
clude[s]  that  a  request  for  nominal  damages  satisfies  the 
redressability element of standing where a plaintiff ’s claim 
is based on a completed violation of a legal right.”  Ante, at 
11. 

Any  lessons  that  we  learn  from  the  common  law,  how-
ever, must be tempered by differences in constitutional de-
sign.  The structure and function of 18th-century  English
courts were in many respects irreconcilable with “the role 
assigned to the judiciary in a tripartite allocation of power.” 
Flast, 392 U. S., at 95.  Perhaps most saliently, in England 
“all jurisdictions of courts [were] either mediately or imme-
diately derived from the crown,” 1 W. Blackstone, Commen-
taries on the Laws of England 257 (1765), an organizational
principle the Framers explicitly rejected by separating the
Executive from the Judiciary.  This difference in organiza-
tion yielded a difference in operation.  To give just one ex-
ample,  “English  judicial  practice  with  which  early  Ameri-
cans were familiar had long permitted the Crown to solicit 
advisory opinions from judges.”  R. Fallon, J. Manning, D.
Meltzer,  &  D.  Shapiro,  Hart  and  Wechsler’s  The  Federal 
Courts and the Federal System 52 (7th ed. 2015).  We would 
not  look  to  such  practice  for  guidance  today  if  a  plaintiff
came into court arguing that advisory opinions were in fact 
an appropriate form of Article III redress.  We would know 
that they are not.  We likewise should know that a bare re-
quest  for  nominal  damages  is  not  justiciable  because  the