Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/13-935
Timestamp: 2019-08-19 20:59:17
Document Index: 34887764

Matched Legal Cases: ['§157', '§636', '§157', '§157', '§157', '§158', '§157', '§157', 'art. 727', '§157', '§157', '§636', '§636', '§636', '§157', '§1', '§9', '§8']

WELLNESS INT'L NETWORK, LTD. v. SHARIF | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
WELLNESS INT’L NETWORK, LTD. v. SHARIF ( )
(a) The foundational case supporting the adjudication of legal disputes by non-Article III judges with the consent of the parties is Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833. There, the Court held that the right to adjudication before an Article III court is “personal” and therefore “subject to waiver.” Id., at 848. The Court also recognized that if Article III’s structural interests as “ ‘an inseparable element of the constitutional system of checks and balances’ ” are implicated, “the parties cannot by consent cure the constitutional difficulty.” Id., at 850–851. The importance of consent was reiterated in two later cases involving the Federal Magistrates Act’s assignment of non-Article III magistrate judges to supervise voir dire in felony trials. In Gomez v. United States, 490 U. S. 858, the Court held that a magistrate judge was not permitted to select a jury without the defendant’s consent, id., at 864. But in Peretz v. United States, 501 U. S. 923, the Court stated that “the defendant’s consent significantly changes the constitutional analysis,” id., at 932. Because an Article III court retained supervisory authority over the process, the Court found “no structural protections . . . implicated” and upheld the Magistrate Judge’s action. Id., at 937. Pp. 8–12.
2. Consent to adjudication by a bankruptcy court need not be express, but must be knowing and voluntary. Neither the Constitution nor the relevant statute—which requires “the consent of all parties to the proceeding” to hear a Stern claim, §157(c)(2)—mandates express consent. Such a requirement would be in great tension with this Court’s holding that substantially similar language in §636(c)—which authorizes magistrate judges to conduct proceedings “[u]pon consent of the parties”—permits waiver based on “actions rather than words,” Roell v. Withrow, 538 U. S. 580, 589. Roell’s implied consent standard supplies the appropriate rule for bankruptcy court adjudications and makes clear that a litigant’s consent—whether express or implied—must be knowing and voluntary. Pp. 18–19.
Congress has also authorized the appointment of bankruptcy and magistrate judges, who do not enjoy the protections of Article III, to assist Article III courts in their work. The number of magistrate and bankruptcy judgeships exceeds the number of circuit and district judgeships. 1 And it is no exaggeration to say that without the distinguished service of these judicial colleagues, the work of the federal court system would grind nearly to a halt. 2
Before 1978, district courts typically delegated bankruptcy proceedings to “referees.” Executive Benefits Ins. Agency v. Arkison, 573 U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 4). Under the Bankruptcy Act of 1898, bankruptcy referees had “[s]ummary jurisdiction” over “claims involving ‘property in the actual or constructive possession of the bankruptcy court’ ”—that is, over the apportionment of the bankruptcy estate among creditors. Ibid. (alteration omitted). They could preside over other proceedings—matters implicating the court’s “plenary jurisdiction”—by consent. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 5); see also MacDonald v. Plymouth County Trust Co., 286 U. S. 263, 266–267 (1932).
When a district court refers a case to a bankruptcy judge, that judge’s statutory authority depends on whether Congress has classified the matter as a “[c]ore proceed-in[g]” or a “[n]on-core proceedin[g],” §§157(b)(2), (4)—much as the authority of bankruptcy referees, before the 1978 Act, depended on whether the proceeding was “summary” or “plenary.” Congress identified as “[c]ore” a nonexclusive list of 16 types of proceedings, §157(b)(2), in which it thought bankruptcy courts could constitutionally enter judgment. 3 Congress gave bankruptcy courts the power to “hear and determine” core proceedings and to “enter appropriate orders and judgments,” subject to appellate review by the district court. §157(b)(1); see §158. But it gave bankruptcy courts more limited author-ity in non-core proceedings: They may “hear and determine” such proceedings, and “enter appropriate orders and judgments,” only “with the consent of all the parties to the proceeding.” §157(c)(2). Absent consent, bankruptcy courts in non-core proceedings may only “submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law,” which the district courts review de novo. §157(c)(1).
Petitioner Wellness International Network is a manufacturer of health and nutrition products. 4 Wellness and respondent Sharif entered into a contract under which Sharif would distribute Wellness’ products. The relationship quickly soured, and in 2005, Sharif sued Wellness in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Sharif repeatedly ignored Wellness’ discovery requests and other litigation obligations, resulting in an entry of default judgment for Wellness. The District Court eventually sanctioned Sharif by awarding Wellness over $650,000 in attorney’s fees. This case arises from Wellness’ long-running—and so far unsuccessful—efforts to collect on that judgment.
The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. 727 F. 3d 751 (2013). The Seventh Circuit acknowledged that ordinarily Sharif’s Stern objection would “not [be] preserved because he waited too long to assert it.” 727 F. 3d, at 767. 5 But the court determined that the ordinary rule did not apply because Sharif’s argument concerned “the allocation of authority between bankruptcy courts and district courts” under Article III, and thus “implicate[d] structural interests.” Id., at 771. Based on those separation-of-powers considerations, the court held that “a litigant may not waive” a Stern objection. Id., at 773. Turning to the merits of Sharif’s contentions, the Seventh Circuit agreed with the Bankruptcy Court’s resolution of counts I–IV of Wellness’ adversary complaint. It further concluded, however, that count V of the complaint alleged a so-called “Stern claim,” that is, “a claim designated for final adjudication in the bankruptcy court as a statutory matter, but prohibited from proceeding in that way as a constitutional matter.” Executive Benefits, 573 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4). The Seventh Circuit therefore ruled that the Bankruptcy Court lacked constitutional authority to enter final judgment on count V. 6
We granted certiorari, 573 U. S. ___ (2014), and now reverse the judgment of the Seventh Circuit. 7
The foundational case in the modern era is Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833 (1986). The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which Congress had authorized to hear customer complaints against commodities brokers, issued a regulation allowing itself to hear state-law counterclaims as well. William Schor filed a complaint with the CFTC against his broker, and the broker, which had previously filed claims against Schor in federal court, refiled them as counterclaims in the CFTC proceeding. The CFTC ruled against Schor on the counterclaims. This Court upheld that ruling against both statutory and constitutional challenges.
A few years after Schor, the Court decided a pair of cases—Gomez v. United States, 490 U. S. 858 (1989), and Peretz v. United States, 501 U. S. 923 (1991)—that reiterated the importance of consent to the constitutional analysis. Both cases concerned whether the Federal Magistrates Act authorized magistrate judges to preside over jury selection in a felony trial; 8 the difference was that Peretz consented to the practice while Gomez did not. That difference was dispositive.
“Magistrates are appointed and subject to removal by Article III judges. The ‘ultimate decision’ whether to invoke the magistrate’s assistance is made by the district court, subject to veto by the parties. The decision whether to empanel the jury whose selection a magistrate has supervised also remains entirely with the district court. Because ‘the entire process takes place under the district court’s total control and jurisdiction,’ there is no danger that use of the magistrate involves a ‘congressional attemp[t] “to transfer jurisdiction [to non-Article III tribunals] for the purpose of emasculating” constitutional courts.’ ” Id., at 937 (citations omitted; alteration in original). 9
Finally, there is no indication that Congress gave bankruptcy courts the ability to decide Stern claims in an effort to aggrandize itself or humble the Judiciary. As in Peretz, “[b]ecause ‘the entire process takes place under the district court’s total control and jurisdiction,’ there is no danger that use of the [bankruptcy court] involves a ‘congres-sional attemp[t] “to transfer jurisdiction [to non-Article III tribunals] for the purpose of emasculating” constitutional courts.’ ” 501 U. S., at 937 (citation omitted); see also Schor, 478 U. S., at 855 (allowing CFTC’s adjudication of counterclaims because of “the degree of judicial control saved to the federal courts, as well as the congressional purpose behind the jurisdictional delegation, the demonstrated need for the delegation, and the limited nature of the delegation” (citation omitted)); Pacemaker Diagnostic Clinic of America, Inc. v. Instromedix, Inc., 725 F. 2d 537, 544 (CA9 1984) (en banc) (Kennedy, J.) (magistrate judges may adjudicate civil cases by consent because the Federal Magistrates Act “invests the Article III judiciary with extensive administrative control over the management, composition, and operation of the magistrate system”). 10
An expansive reading of Stern, moreover, would be inconsistent with the opinion’s own description of its holding. The Court in Stern took pains to note that the question before it was “a ‘narrow’ one,” and that its answer did “not change all that much” about the division of labor between district courts and bankruptcy courts. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 37); see also id., at ___ (slip op., at 38) (stating that Congress had exceeded the limitations of Article III “in one isolated respect”). That could not have been a fair characterization of the decision if it meant that bank-ruptcy judges could no longer exercise their longstanding authority to resolve claims submitted to them by consent. Interpreting Stern to bar consensual adjudications by bankruptcy courts would “meaningfully chang[e] the division of labor” in our judicial system, contra, id., at ___ (slip op., at 37). 11
Nothing in the Constitution requires that consent to adjudication by a bankruptcy court be express. Nor does the relevant statute, 28 U. S. C. §157, mandate express consent; it states only that a bankruptcy court must obtain “the consent”—consent simpliciter—“of all parties to the proceeding” before hearing and determining a non-core claim. §157(c)(2). And a requirement of express consent would be in great tension with our decision in Roell v. Withrow, 538 U. S. 580 (2003). That case concerned the interpretation of §636(c), which authorizes magistrate judges to “conduct any or all proceedings in a jury or nonjury civil matter and order the entry of judgment in the case,” with “the consent of the parties.” 12 The specific question in Roell was whether, as a statutory matter, the “consent” required by §636(c) had to be express. The dissent argued that “[r]eading §636(c)(1) to require express consent not only is more consistent with the text of the statute, but also” avoids constitutional concerns by “ensur[ing] that the parties knowingly and voluntarily waive their right to an Article III judge.” 538 U. S., at 595 (opinion of Thomas, J.). But the majority—thus placed on notice of the constitutional concern—was untroubled by it, opining that “the Article III right is substantially honored” by permitting waiver based on “actions rather than words.” Id., at 589, 590.
The implied consent standard articulated in Roell supplies the appropriate rule for adjudications by bankruptcy courts under §157. Applied in the bankruptcy context, that standard possesses the same pragmatic virtues—increasing judicial efficiency and checking gamesmanship—that motivated our adoption of it for consent-based adjudications by magistrate judges. See id., at 590. It bears emphasizing, however, that a litigant’s consent—whether express or implied—must still be knowing and voluntary. Roell makes clear that the key inquiry is whether “the litigant or counsel was made aware of the need for consent and the right to refuse it, and still voluntarily appeared to try the case” before the non-Article III adjudicator. Ibid.; see also id., at 588, n. 5 (“notification of the right to refuse” adjudication by a non-Article III court “is a prerequisite to any inference of consent”). 13
I join the opinion of the Court insofar as it holds that a bankruptcy judge’s resolution of a “Stern claim” 1 * with the consent of the parties does not violate Article III of the Constitution. The Court faithfully applies Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833 (1986). No one believes that an arbitrator exercises “[t]he judicial Power of the United States,” Art. III, §1, in an ordinary, run-of-the mill arbitration. And whatever differences there may be between an arbitrator’s “decision” and a bankruptcy court’s “judgment,” those differences would seem to fall within the Court’s previous rejection of “formalistic and unbending rules.” Schor, supra, at 851. Whatever one thinks of Schor, it is still the law of this Court, and the parties do not ask us to revisit it.
1* See Stern v. Marshall, 564 U. S. ___ (2011). A “Stern claim” is a claim that is “core” under the statute but yet “prohibited from proceeding in that way as a constitutional matter.” Executive Benefits Ins. Agency v. Arkison, 573 U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 4).
Today the Court lets down its guard. Despite our precedent directing that “parties cannot by consent cure” an Article III violation implicating the structural separation of powers, Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833, 850–851 (1986), the majority authorizes litigants to do just that. The Court justifies its decision largely on pragmatic grounds. I would not yield so fully to functionalism. The Framers adopted the formal protections of Article III for good reasons, and “the fact that a given law or procedure is efficient, convenient, and useful in facilitating functions of government, standing alone, will not save it if it is contrary to the Constitution.” INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 944 (1983).
The Framers of the Constitution “lived among the ruins of a system of intermingled legislative and judicial powers.” Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211, 219 (1995). Under British rule, the King “made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.” The Declaration of Independence ¶11. Between the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, state legislatures routinely interfered with judgments of the courts. This history created the “sense of a sharp necessity to separate the legislative from the judicial power.” Plaut, 514 U. S., at 221; see Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Assn., 575 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2015) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 5–8). The result was Article III, which established a judiciary “truly distinct from both the legislature and the executive.” The Federalist No. 78, p. 466 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton).
The Bankruptcy Act of 1898 provides further support for Wellness’s position. Under that Act, bankruptcy referees had authority to exercise “summary” jurisdiction over certain claims, while other claims could only be adjudi-cated in “plenary” proceedings before an Article III district court. See Arkison, 573 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 4–5). This Court interpreted the 1898 Act to permit bankruptcy referees to exercise summary jurisdiction to determine whether property in the actual or constructive possession of a debtor should come within the estate, at least when no third party asserted more than a “merely colorable” claim to the property. Mueller v. Nugent, 184 U. S. 1, 15 (1902). In the legal parlance of the times, a “merely colorable” claim was one that existed “in appearance only, and not in reality.” Black’s Law Dictionary 223 (1891). So a bankruptcy referee could exercise summary jurisdiction over property in the debtor’s possession as long as no third party asserted a “substantial adverse” claim. Taubel-Scott-Kitzmiller Co. v. Fox, 264 U. S. 426, 431–433 (1924).
In Mueller, for example, this Court held that a bankruptcy referee could exercise summary jurisdiction over property in the possession of a third party acting as the debtor’s agent. 184 U. S., at 14–17; see Black’s Law Dictionary 302 (10th ed. 2014) (example of a merely “color-able” claim is “one made by a person holding property as an agent or bailee of the bankrupt”). Similarly, this Court held that a bankruptcy referee could exercise summary jurisdiction over a creditor’s claim that the debtor had concealed assets under the veil of a corporate entity that was “nothing but a sham and a cloak.” Sampsell v. Imperial Paper & Color Corp., 313 U. S. 215, 216–217 (1941) (internal quotation marks omitted), rev’g 114 F. 2d 49, 52 (CA9 1940) (describing creditor’s claim that corporation was debtor’s “alter ego”). As the Court explained in Sampsell, the “legal existence of the affiliated corporation” did not automatically require a plenary proceeding, because “[m]ere legal paraphernalia will not suffice to transform into a substantial adverse claimant a corporation whose affairs are so closely assimilated to the affairs of the dominant stockholder that in substance it is little more than his corporate pocket.” 313 U. S., at 218. Just as the bankruptcy referee in that case had authority to decide whether assets allegedly concealed behind the corporate veil belonged to the bankruptcy estate, the Bankruptcy Court here had authority to decide whether the assets allegedly concealed in the trust belonged to Sharif’sestate.
Sharif contends that Wellness’s alter ego claim is more like an allegation of a fraudulent conveyance, which this Court has implied must be adjudicated by an Article III court. See Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33, 56 (1989); Arkison, 573 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 8–9). Although both actions aim to remedy a debtor’s deception, they differ in a critical respect. A fraudulent conveyance claim seeks assets in the hands of a third party, while an alter ego claim targets only the debtor’s “second self.” Webster’s New International Dictionary 76 (2d ed. 1954). That distinction is significant given bankruptcy’s historic domain over property within the actual or constructive “possession [of] the bankrupt at the time of the filing of the petition.” Thompson v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 309 U. S. 478, 481 (1940). Through a fraudulent conveyance, a dishonest debtor relinquishes possession of assets before filing for bankruptcy. Reclaiming those assets for the estate requires depriving third parties of property within their otherwise lawful possession and control, an action that “quintessentially” required a suit at common law. Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 56. By contrast, a debtor’s possession of property provided “an adequate basis” for a bankruptcy referee to adjudicate a dispute over title in a summary proceeding. Thompson, 309 U. S., at 482; see Mueller, 184 U. S., at 15–16 (distinguishing claim to property in possession of debtor’s agent from fraudulent conveyance claim in determining that bankruptcy referee could exercise summary jurisdiction).
Preserving the separation of powers is one of this Court’s most weighty responsibilities. In performing that duty, we have not hesitated to enforce the Constitution’s mandate “that one branch of the Government may not intrude upon the central prerogatives of another.” Loving v. United States, 517 U. S. 748, 757 (1996). We have accordingly invalidated executive actions that encroach upon the power of the Legislature, see NLRB v. Noel Canning, 573 U. S. ___ (2014); Youngstown, 343 U. S. 579; legislative actions that invade the province of the Executive, see PCAOB, 561 U. S. 477; Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U. S. 714 (1986); Chadha, 462 U. S. 919; Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52 (1926); and actions by either branch that trench upon the territory of the Judiciary, see Stern, 564 U. S. ___; Plaut, 514 U. S. 211; United States v. Will, 449 U. S. 200 (1980); United States v. Klein, 13 Wall. 128 (1872); Hayburn’s Case, 2 Dall. 409 (1792).
In neither of these cases did the branches’ willing embrace of a separation of powers violation weaken the Court’s scrutiny. To the contrary, the branches’ “enthusiasm” for the offending arrangements “ ‘sharpened rather than blunted’ our review.” Noel Canning, 573 U. S., at ___ (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 4) (quoting Chadha, 462 U. S, at 944). In short, because the structural provisions of the Constitution protect liberty and not just government entities, “the separation of powers does not depend on . . . whether ‘the encroached-upon branch approves the encroachment.’ ” PCAOB, 561 U. S., at 497 (quoting New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 182 (1992)).
If a branch of the Federal Government may not consent to a violation of the separation of powers, surely a private litigant may not do so. Just as a branch of Government may not consent away the individual liberty interest protected by the separation of powers, so too an individual may not consent away the institutional interest protected by the separation of powers. To be sure, a private litigant may consensually relinquish individual constitutional rights. A federal criminal defendant, for example, may knowingly and voluntarily waive his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial by pleading guilty to a charged offense. See Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742, 748 (1970). But that same defendant may not agree to stand trial on federal charges before a state court, a foreign court, or a moot court, because those courts have no constitutional author-ity to exercise judicial power over his case, and he has no power to confer it. A “lack of federal jurisdiction cannot be waived or be overcome by an agreement of the parties.” Mitchell v. Maurer, 293 U. S. 237, 244 (1934).
As the majority recognizes, the Court’s most extensive discussion of litigant consent in a separation of powers case occurred in Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833 (1986). There the Court held that Article III confers both a “personal right” that can be waived through consent and a structural component that “safeguards the role of the Judicial Branch in our tripartite system.” Id., at 848, 850. “To the extent that this structural principle is implicated in a given case, the parties cannot by consent cure the constitutional difficulty for the same reason that the parties by consent cannot confer on federal courts subject-matter jurisdiction beyond the limitations imposed by Article III.” Id., at 850–851. Thus, when “Article III limitations are at issue, notions of consent and waiver cannot be dispositive because the limitations serve institutional interests that the parties cannot be expected to protect.” Id., at 851.
It is a fundamental principle that no branch of government can delegate its constitutional functions to an actor who lacks authority to exercise those functions. See Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 472 (2001); Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U. S. 238, 311 (1936). Such delegations threaten liberty and thwart accountability by empowering entities that lack the structural protections the Framers carefully devised. See Department of Transportation v. Association of American Railroads, 575 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2015) (Alito, J., concurring) (slip op., at 6–7); id., at ___–___ (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 2–3); Mistretta v. United States, 488 U. S. 361, 417–422 (1989) (Scalia, J., dissenting). Article III judges have no constitutional authority to delegate the judicial power—the power to “render dispositive judgments”—to non-Article III judges, no matter how closely they control or supervise theirwork. Plaut, 514 U. S., at 219 (internal quotation marks omitted).
The majority also points to 19th-century cases in which courts referred disputes to non-Article III referees, masters, or arbitrators. Ante, at 8. In those cases, however, it was the Article III court that ultimately entered final judgment. E.g., Thornton v. Carson, 7 Cranch 596, 600 (1813) (“the Court was right in entering the judgment for the sums awarded”). Article III courts do refer matters to non-Article III actors for assistance from time to time. This Court does so regularly in original jurisdiction cases. See, e.g., Kansas v. Nebraska, 574 U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (slip op., at 1). But under the Constitution, the “ultimate responsibility for deciding” the case must remain with the Article III court. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 6) (quoting Colorado v. New Mexico, 467 U. S. 310, 317 (1984)).
The concurrence’s comparison of bankruptcy judges to arbitrators is similarly inapt. Ante, at 1 (opinion of Alito, J.). Arbitration is “a matter of contract” by which parties agree to resolve their disputes in a private forum. Rent-A-Center, West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U. S. 63, 67 (2010). Such an arrangement does not implicate Article III any more than does an agreement between two business partners to submit a difference of opinion to a mutually trusted friend. Arbitration agreements, like most private contracts, can be enforced in court. And Congress, pursuant to its Commerce Clause power, has authorized district courts to enter judgments enforcing arbitration awards under certain circumstances. See 9 U. S. C. §9. But this ordinary scheme of contract enforcement creates no constitutional concern. As the concurrence acknowledges, only Article III judges—not arbitrators—may enter final judgments enforcing arbitration awards. Ante, at 1.
In Stern, the Court cautioned that Congress “may no more lawfully chip away at the authority of the Judicial Branch than it may eliminate it entirely.” 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 37). The majority sees no reason to fret, however, so long as two private parties consent. Ante, at 14, n. 10. But such parties are unlikely to carefully weigh the long-term structural independence of the Article III judiciary against their own short-term priorities. Perhaps the majority’s acquiescence in this diminution of constitutional authority will escape notice. Far more likely, however, it will amount to the kind of “blueprint for extensive expansion of the legislative power” that we have resisted in the past. PCAOB, 561 U. S., at 500 (quoting Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority v. Citizens for Abatement of Aircraft Noise, Inc., 501 U. S. 252, 277 (1991)).
This does not mean, however, that consent is invariably irrelevant to the constitutional inquiry. Although it may not authorize a constitutional violation, consent may prevent one from occurring in the first place. This concept is perhaps best understood with the example on which the majority and The Chief Justice both rely: the right to a jury trial. Ante, at 9 (majority opinion); ante, at 11 (Roberts, C. J., dissenting). 1 Although the Government incurably contravenes the Constitution when it acts in violation of the jury trial right, our precedents permit the Government to convict a criminal defendant without a jury trial when he waives that right. See Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742, 748 (1970). The defendant’s waiver is thus a form of consent that lifts a limitation on government action by satisfying its terms—that is, the right is exercised and honored, not disregarded. See Patton v. United States, 281 U. S. 276, 296–298 (1930), abrogated on other grounds by Williams v. Florida, 399 U. S. 78 (1970). Provided the Government otherwise acts within its powers, there is no constitutional violation.
Rather than attempt to grapple with these problems, the majority seizes on some statements from Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833 (1986), to resolve the difficult constitutional issue before us. See ante, at 9–12. But to the extent Schor suggests that individual consent could authorize non-Article III courts to exercise the judicial power, 478 U. S., at 850–851, it was wrongly decided and should be abandoned. Consent to adjudication by non-Article III judges may waive whatever individual right to impartial adjudication Article III implies, thereby lifting that affirmative barrier on Government action. But non-Article III courts must still act within the bounds of their constitutional authority. That is, they must act through a power properly delegated to the Federal Government and not vested by the Constitution in a different governmental actor. Because the judicial power is vested exclusively in Article III courts, non-Article III courts may not exercise it.
Under our precedents, the three categories of cases that may be adjudicated by Article III courts but that do not demand the exercise of the judicial power are those arising in the territories, those arising in the Armed Forces, and those involving public-rights disputes. Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50, 63–67 (1982) (plurality opinion).
The first two represent unique historical exceptions that tell us little about the overall scope of the judicial power. From an early date, this Court has long upheld laws authorizing the adjudication of cases arising in the territories in non-Article III “territorial courts” on the ground that such courts exercise power “conferred by Congress, in the execution of those general powers which [Congress] possesses over the territories of the United States.” American Ins. Co. v. 356 Bales of Cotton, 1 Pet. 511, 546 (1828) (Canter). 2 And the Court has upheld laws authorizing the adjudication of cases arising in the Armed Forces in non-Article III courts-martial, inferring from a constellation of constitutional provisions that Congress has the power to provide for the adjudication of disputes among the Armed Forces it creates and that Article III extends only to civilian judicial power. Dynes v. Hoover, 20 How. 65, 78–79 (1858). Whatever their historical validity, these precedents exempt cases arising in the territories and in the land and naval forces from Article III because of other provisions of the Constitution, not because of the definition of judicial power in Article III itself. See Nelson, Adjudication in the Political Branches, 107 Colum. L. Rev. 559, 576 (2007) (noting that both exceptions enjoy “special textual rationales that d[o] not spill over into otherareas”).
The distinction was well known at the time of the founding. In the tradition of John Locke, William Blackstone in his Commentaries identified the private rights to life, liberty, and property as the three “absolute” rights—so called because they “appertain[ed] and belong[ed] to particular men . . . merely as individuals,” not “to them as members of society [or] standing in various relations to each other”—that is, not dependent upon the will of the government. 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 119 (1765) (Commentaries); see also Nelson, supra, at 567. 3 Public rights, by contrast, belonged to “the whole community, considered as a community, in its social aggregate capacity.” 4 Commentaries 5 (1769); see also Nelson, supra, at 567. As the modern doctrine of the separation of powers emerged, “the courts became identified with the enforcement of private right, and administrative agencies with the execution of public policy.” Jaffe, The Right to Judicial Review I, 71 Harv. L. Rev. 401, 413 (1958).
Nineteenth-century American jurisprudence confirms that an exercise of the judicial power was thought to be necessary for the disposition of private, but not public, rights. 4 See B&B Hardware, ante, at 12. The treatment of land patents illustrates the point well: Although Congress could authorize executive agencies to dispose of public rights in land—often by means of adjudicating a claimant’s qualifications for a land grant under a statute—the United States had to go to the courts if it wished to revoke a patent. See generally Nelson, 107 Colum. L. Rev., at 577–578 (discussing land patents). That differential treatment reflected the fact that, once “legal title passed out of the United States,” the patent “[u]ndoubtedly” constituted “a vested right” and consequently could “only be divested according to law.” Johnson v. Towsley, 13 Wall. 72, 84–85 (1871). By contrast, a party who sought to protect only a “public right” in the land had no such vested right and could not invoke the intervention of Article III courts. See Smelting Co. v. Kemp, 104 U. S. 636, 647 (1882) (“It does not lie in the mouth of a stranger to the title to complain of the act of the government with respect to it”); see also Bagnell v. Broderick, 13 Pet. 436, 450 (1839) (refusing to examine the propriety of a land patent on the ground that “Congress has the sole power to declare the dignity and effect of titles emanating from the United States”).
Over time, the line between public and private rights has blurred, along with the Court’s treatment of the judicial power. See B&B Hardware, ante, at 9–10, 12. The source of the confusion may be Murray’s Lessee—the putative source of the public rights doctrine itself. Dictum in the case muddles the distinction between private and public rights, and the decision is perhaps better read as an expression of the principle of sovereign immunity. Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 68–69 (opinion of Scalia, J.). 5 Some cases appear to have done just that, thus reading Murray’s Lessee to apply only in disputes arising between the Government and others. See, e.g., Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 50 (1932).
Another strain of cases has confused the distinction between private and public rights, with some cases treating public rights as the equivalent of private rights entitled to full judicial review, American School of Magnetic Healing v. McAnnulty, 187 U. S. 94, 108 (1902), and others treating what appear to be private rights as public rights on which executive action could be conclusive, see, e.g., Sunshine Anthracite Coal Co. v. Adkins, 310 U. S. 381, 401–404 (1940); see also B&B Hardware, ante, at 12 (observing that Sunshine Anthracite may reflect a unique historical exception for tax cases). Cf. Northern Pipeline, 458 U. S., at 84–85 (plurality opinion) (discussing other cases that appear to reflect the historical distinction between private rights and rights created by Congress). Perhaps this confusion explains why the Court has more recently expanded the concept of public rights to include any right “so closely integrated into a public regulatory scheme as to be a matter appropriate for agency resolution with limited involvement by the Article III judiciary.” Thomas v. Union Carbide Agricultural Products Co., 473 U. S. 568, 593–594 (1985). A return to the historical understanding of “public rights,” however, would lead to the conclusion that the inalienable core of the judicial power vested by Article III in the federal courts is the power to adjudicate private rights disputes.
But all of this does not necessarily mean that the majority has wound up in the right place by the wrong path. Even if consent could lift the private-rights barrier to non-judicial Government action, it would not necessarily follow that consent removes the Stern adjudication from the core of the judicial power. There may be other aspects of the adjudication that demand the exercise of the judicial power, such as entry of a final judgment enforceable without any further action by an Article III court. We have recognized that judgments entered by Article III courts bear unique qualities that spring from the exercise of the judicial power, Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211, 218–219 (1995), and it may be that the entry of a final judgment bearing these qualities—irrespective of the subject matter of the dispute—is a quintessential judicial function. See ante, at 16–17 (Roberts, C. J., dissenting). See generally Northern Pipeline, supra, at 85–86, and n. 38 (plurality opinion) (distinguishing the agency orders at issue in Crowell from bankruptcy court orders on this ground). As Thomas Cooley explained in his influential treatise, “If the judges should sit to hear . . . controversies [beyond their cognizance], they would not sit as a court; at the most they would be arbitrators only, and their . . . decision could not be binding as a judgment, but only as an award.” Cooley, supra, at 399. 6
Although our cases examining the constitutionality of statutes allocating the power to the bankruptcy courts have not considered the source of Congress’ authority to establish them, the obvious textual basis is the fourth clause of Article I, §8, which empowers Congress to “establish . . . uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States.” 7 But as with the other two historical carve-outs, Congress’ power to establish tribunals within that grant is informed by historical understandings of the bankruptcy power. 8 We have suggested that, under this historical understanding, Congress has the power to establish bankruptcy courts that exercise jurisdiction akin to that of bankruptcy commissioners in England, subject to review traditionally had in England. Ante, at 3–4 (Roberts, C. J., dissenting). Although Stern claims, by definition, lie outside those historical boundaries, a historical practice of allowing broader adjudication by bankruptcy commissioners acting with the consent of the parties could alter the analysis. The parties once again do not brief these questions, but they merit closer attention by this Court.
1 There is some dispute whether the guarantee of a jury trial protects an individual right, a structural right, or both, raising serious questions about how it should be treated under Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833 (1986). My view, which does not turn on such taxonomies, leaves no doubt: It is a “fundamental reservation of power in our constitutional structure,” Blakely v. Washington, 542 U. S. 296, 306 (2004), meaning its violation may not be authorized by the consent of the individual.