Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 49

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

17 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

the  power  to  assess  civil  penalties,  advised  a  committee 
overseen  by  Attorney  General  (soon-to-be  Justice)  Robert 
H. Jackson, “the aggrieved person” should at least “be per-
mitted  review  de novo  by  a  Federal  district  court.”    Final 
Report of Attorney General’s Committee on Administrative
Procedure 147 (1941).  That was the only way, the commit-
tee opined, “to resolve any doubts concerning the constitu-
tionality of the procedure.”  Ibid.  Around the same time, a 
committee of the American Bar Association led by Roscoe
Pound sounded a similar alarm.  Administrative agencies, 
the committee warned, had a “tendency to mix up rule mak-
ing, investigation, prosecution, the advocate’s function, the 
judge’s  function,  and  the  function  of  enforcing  the  judg-
ment, so that the whole proceeding from end to end is one 
to give effect to a complaint.”  Report of the Special Com-
mittee  on  Administrative  Law,  63  Ann.  Rep.  331,  351
(1938).

The high-water mark of the movement toward agency ad-
judication may have come in 1977 in Atlas Roofing Co. v. 
Occupational Safety and Health Review Comm’n, 430 U. S. 
442.  Some have read that decision to suggest the category 
of public rights might encompass pretty much any case aris-
ing under any “ ‘new statutory obligations,’ ” Brief for Peti-
tioner 22 (quoting Atlas Roofing, 430 U. S., at 450).  It is a 
view the government essentially espouses in this case.  But 
without  reference  to  any  constitutional  text  or  history  to
guide what does or does not qualify as a public right, that
view has (unsurprisingly) proven wholly unworkable. 

It did not take long for this Court to realize as much.  Just 
12  years  later,  in  Granfinanciera,  S. A.  v.  Nordberg,  492 
U. S.  33  (1989),  this  Court  cabined  Atlas  Roofing  so  nar-
rowly that the author of Atlas Roofing complained that the
Court had “overrul[ed]” it.  492 U. S., at 71, n. 1 (White, J., 
dissenting);  see  ante,  at  23,  n. 3.    Far  from  endorsing  the
notion that any new statutory obligation could qualify for