Source: http://colloquy.law.northwestern.edu/main/2007/08/jurisdictionali.html
Timestamp: 2014-07-31 03:20:17
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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2107', '§ 2107', '§ 2107', '§ 2107', '§ 2107', '§ 2107', '§\n2107', '§ 2107', '§ 1446', '§ 1446', '§ 1446', '§ 2107', '§ 2107', 'art, 126', 'art, 126']

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Jurisdictionality and Bowles v. Russell
By Scott Dodson[*][download pdf]
On June 14, 2007, the Supreme Court decided Bowles v. Russell,[1]
a case watched primarily by procedure geeks but one which may have enormous
impact for courts and litigators. It
addressed a ubiquitous but confusing question of jurisdictional
characterization: when is a limitation
“jurisdictional,” and when is it not? Litigators encounter these questions all the time in statutory coverage
issues, in time limitations, and in a host of other preconditions. Whether a particular limitation is
jurisdictional or not can be an important question, for jurisdictional
limitations are not subject to waiver or equitable exceptions, may be raised at
any time, and obligate courts to monitor and raise them sua sponte. In Bowles, the Court held that the
statutory time limitation for filing a notice of appeal is jurisdictional.
Brief Summary of Bowles
Keith Bowles was convicted of murder in Ohio and
unsuccessfully appealed through the state court system. He filed a federal habeas corpus petition,
which was denied by the district court on September 9, 2003. He did not appeal within the required 30 day
period, but in December timely moved to reopen the period during which he could
file his notice of appeal. His motion
was granted by the district court on February 10, 2004.[2]
In its order, the district court gave Bowles seventeed
days—until February 27—to file his notice of appeal. Bowles filed on February 26.[3] The problem is that while 28 U.S.C.
§ 2107(c) authorizes a district court to reopen and extend the time to
appeal, it limits that extension period to fourteen days. Thus, Bowles’s notice of appeal was timely
under the district court’s order but untimely under § 2107(c).
The Sixth Circuit dismissed the appeal for lack of
jurisdiction.[4] The Supreme Court, in a brief 5-4 majority
opinion by Justice Thomas, affirmed.
Justice Thomas began by asserting: “This Court has long held that the taking of
an appeal within the prescribed time is ‘mandatory and jurisdictional.’”[5] That has been so particularly for statutory
time limits because Congress has the constitutional authority to regulate the
courts’ jurisdiction. In § 2107,
Congress “specifically limited the amount of time by which district courts can
extend the notice-of-appeal period.”[6] Accordingly, for Justice Thomas, that meant
that the time period of § 2107(c) is jurisdictional and not susceptible to
the equitable exception sought by Bowles.
Justice Thomas also reasoned that a jurisdictional
characterization “makes good sense.” He
wrote: “If rigorous rules like the one
applied today are thought to be inequitable, Congress may authorize courts to
promulgate rules that excuse compliance with the statutory time limits.”
In dissent, Justice Souter, joined by Justices Stevens,
Ginsburg, and Breyer, decried the unfair result of precluding Bowles’s appeal
when he filed within the time allowed by the district judge: “It is intolerable for the judicial system to
treat people this way, and there is not even a technical justification for
condoning this bait and switch.”[7] In addition, Justice Souter noted that recent
opinions of the Court have stepped back from strict adherence to jurisdictional
characterizations and have called into question the precedent that Justice Thomas
relied upon. Under that trend, he
argued, the limitation in § 2107(c) should not be viewed as
jurisdictional. Accordingly, he would
find an equitable exception available to Bowles.
II. Where
Bowles Goes Wrong
At a first glance of Justice Thomas’s opinion for the
Court, the issues seem relatively straightforward and the result
reasonable. But, as Justice Souter
points out in dissent, there is far more at stake than just the jurisdictionality
of § 2107(c). By eliding the
complexity and far reach of jurisdictional characterization issues, Bowles creates tension with precedent
and increases the risk of wasted litigant and judicial resources. A. Doctrinal Inconsistency and Uncertainty
Justice Souter was correct to note that prior to Bowles, recent decisions had identified
rampant misuse of the term “jurisdictional,” and that the Court had tried to
curtail that misuse by providing clearer guidelines as to when a limit was
jurisdictional or not.[8]
The first guideline concerned whether the limit was
phrased in jurisdictional terms. If so,
the presumption was that the limit was jurisdictional. If not, then the presumption was that the
limit was not.[9]
The next guideline entailed looking at the limit and
classifying it either as a “claim-processing rule,” which generally was not
jurisdictional, or a line that separates “classes of cases,” which generally
was.[10] For example, the Court had characterized as
nonjurisdictional “claim-processing rules” both Bankruptcy Rule 4004, which
gives a Chapter 7 creditor sixty days after the first date set for the meeting
of creditors to file a complaint objecting to the debtor’s discharge,[11]
and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33(b)(2), which sets a time deadline to
file a motion for a new trial.[12] The Court contrasted these nonjurisdictional
limits with “prescriptions delineating the classes of cases (subject-matter
jurisdiction) and the persons (personal jurisdiction) falling within a court’s
adjudicatory authority.”[13]
Bowles sweeps
these decisions aside as distinguishable and dismisses the framework that they
erected as mere dicta. But Justice
Thomas does not explain why the framework would not be valuable for §
2107. Instead, Justice Thomas
distinguishes those cases on the ground that they dealt with federal rules as
opposed to statutes. He is right that
they are distinguishable, but he is wrong to use that distinction as a reason
to discard the helpful guidance provided by those cases. Those cases developed the guidance to apply
broadly and to signal a willingness to revisit, in a principled way, prior decisions’
loose use of the term “jurisdictional” to describe certain limits.[14] Instead of explaining why the guidance was
not appropriate in this case, however, Justice Thomas simply refused to apply
it and relied instead on the very same prior decisions that had used the term
“jurisdictional” loosely. Justice Souter
is right: “By its refusal to come to
grips with our considered statements of law the majority leaves the Court
incoherent.[15]
At the same time, Justice Thomas failed to adopt any
substitute guidance other than the fact that the limit was expressed in a
statute. I agree that rules adopted
under the Rules Enabling Act are different than statutes in “jurisdictionally
significant”[16]
ways because Congress can restrict judicial jurisdiction by statute.[17] But just because Congress can
does not mean that it does so in all cases. Not all statutory limits are jurisdictional limits.[18] Justice Thomas does not say what it is about
§ 2107 that makes it jurisdictional and what it is about, say, Title VII’s
time limit for filing a complaint that makes it nonjurisdictional.[19] After Bowles,
lower courts will be left to wonder how to determine the jurisdictionality of
other statutory limits.
The removal statute, for example, may be a limit with
which the courts soon wrestle. Every
single circuit court to rule on the characterization of the § 1446
requirement—that a notice of removal be filed within 30 days after service—has
held it to be nonjurisdictional.[20] Likewise, every circuit to publish an opinion
on the characterization of the § 1446 requirement that a notice of removal
based on diversity be filed within one year has held it to be
nonjurisdictional.[21] After Bowles,
courts adopting a nonjurisdictional characterization of § 1446 will have
to reconsider that characterization (though, as I suggest elsewhere,[22]
Bowles need not be considered a
controlling case if put in its proper place within a broader framework). Removal is just one area that is certain to
become more confused after Bowles.[23]
B. Increased Risk of Wasted Resources
Bowles reverses
a presumption of nonjurisdictionality imposed in prior cases, to the detriment
of litigants and the courts. Previously,
only Congress’s explicit designation of a statutory limit as jurisdictional
raised a presumption of jurisdictionality,[24]
and for good reason: as a matter of
separation of powers, the courts must defer to Congress’s delineations of jurisdiction,
for Congress wields the constitutional power to monitor jurisdiction.
The converse presumption also makes sense. If Congress has not designed a statutory
limit as jurisdictional, then it should be presumed to be nonjurisdictional
because a jurisdictional rule often entails heavy costs on the litigants and
legal system.[25] Jurisdiction can be raised at any time and
obligates courts to monitor it sua sponte. Thus, a jurisdictional defect discovered well
into trial causes disruption, unfairness, and tremendous waste of time and
resources. Withholding a jurisdictional
characterization without a specific designation of jurisdiction by Congress
ensures that Congress has duly considered these costs and deemed them
outweighed by the need for the benefits of a jurisdictional bar.[26]
Bowles dispenses
with these presumptions and reverses them: statutory time limits are presumed jurisdictional unless Congress says
otherwise. That is just bad business,
First, litigants conserve their own (and judicial)
resources by contesting only those issues that at least one litigant deems important
enough to warrant litigation. By making
a host of statutory limitations jurisdictional, Bowles obligates the courts to investigate all of these issues sua sponte even if none of the litigants
wish to expend effort and money on their adjudication. And if such a limit is found to have been
breached, the court must dismiss the case, even if the defect is found after
years of costly discovery and trial preparation.
Second, the rule allows a single party that recognizes a
potential jurisdictional defect to have two bites at the apple: if she fails on the merits, she can raise the
jurisdictional defect. This is a real
concern. In Arbaugh v. Y&H Corp., for example, the defendant lost at trial
and only on appeal raised the “jurisdictional” argument that it was never
covered by the statute in the first place.[27] And if the statutory precondition is
jurisdictional, the party who failed to
satisfy it is just as able to raise it on appeal to vacate an unfavorable
result. In other words, the plaintiff in
Arbaugh could have raised the
“jurisdictional” issue as well if she had been dissatisfied with her verdict
and wanted another shot. Bowles, by crafting a presumption that favors
a jurisdictional characterization, is likely to result in a great waste of
litigant and court resources and to encourage losing parties to raise “jurisdictional”
issues for the first time on appeal.
Better Way: Mandatory but
To avoid this tension with precedent, waste of litigant
and judicial resources, and unfairness, the Court should have considered
characterizing the time limit of § 2107(c) as mandatory but
nonjurisdictional. That characterization
would have enabled the Court to reach the same result without doing violence to
the nature of jurisdiction or to precedent.
A mandatory rule restricts the discretion of the court to
deviate from the rule when one party timely objects, but that does not mean
that it is jurisdictional. As the Court
long ago recognized, nonjurisdictional but mandatory legal rules have a functional
role to play:
The provision is not directory only, but mandatory to
the government; and its purpose is to inform the defendant of the testimony
which he will have to meet, and to enable him to prepare his defense. Being enacted for his benefit, he may
doubtless waive it, if he pleases; but he has a right to insist upon it, and if
he seasonably does so, the trial cannot lawfully proceed until the requirement
has been complied with.[28]
Thus, a mandatory limit places control of its enforcement
in the hands of the litigant whom it would benefit. If he wishes to enforce it, he need only
speak up in a timely manner, and the court is obligated to enforce the limit
even if it is inequitable to do so. Mandatory limits conserve litigant and judicial resources, while at the
same time eliminating judicial discretion in determining when a limit is
excusable or not. In contrast, jurisdictional
rules constrain the litigants as well and therefore result in greater inefficiencies.
In Bowles, the
Court could have construed the limit in § 2107(c) as merely
mandatory. That characterization would
have precluded Mr. Bowles’ equitable “unique circumstances” excuse for his
failure to meet the statutory time limit. Even if inequitable, a court has no discretion to deviate from a
properly invoked mandatory rule.
Characterizing time limits for appeals as mandatory but
nonjurisdictional is in accord with the nature of jurisdiction. Jurisdiction generally is founded on
structural values such as federalism, separation of powers, and limited
national government, not the litigant and systematic values of efficiency,
cost-effectiveness, autonomy, predictability, and fairness. The nature of jurisdiction speaks to the
power of the court, not to the rights and obligations of parties.[29]
Unlike jurisdictional rules, appeal periods involve
primarily the interests of the litigants, not structural values. They exist to promote efficiency in the same
way that other procedural rules do. Indeed, they are closer to statutes of limitation than to rules of
subject-matter jurisdiction such as diversity jurisdiction.
Describing appellate time limits as mandatory but
nonjurisdictional has the added benefit of being consistent with
precedent. True, a host of Supreme Court
cases beginning in 1960 had described those time limits as “mandatory and
jurisdictional,”[30]
though the precedent was not entirely consistent.[31] But, as others have explained, the outcome
and reasoning in each case using the standard doublet “mandatory and
jurisdictional” could have been obtained by characterizing the limit as
mandatory and nonjurisdictional, for
the only issue was whether the court had authority to relax the requirements
after the defect had been properly and timely raised by the party who would
benefit from the limit.[32] Thus, those cases could be best read as
holding only that the limits were mandatory, and their additional language of
“jurisdictional” seen as rhetorical emphasis on the mandatory and inflexible
nature of the rule.[33] A mandatory but nonjurisdictional characterization
also would be consistent with more recent precedent, which trended toward
nonjurisdictional characterizations.[34]
is a sleeper case. Although it seems relatively
straightforward on the surface, it undermines precedent and lacks principled
reasoning for its result. As a
consequence, Bowles likely will cause
great confusion among the lower courts and litigants whenever a statutory limitation
issue arises. That, in turn, will mean
more litigation, more circuit splits, and more confusion about what limits are
jurisdictional and what are not.
*. Assistant Professor of Law, University of Arkansas School of Law. This essay previews some of the commentary on Bowles v. Russell and removal in my article “In Search of Removal Jurisdiction,” forthcoming in Northwestern University Law Review.
S. Ct. 2360 (2007) (link).
2. Id. at 2362.
4. Bowles
v. Russell, 432 F.3d 668 (6th Cir. 2005).
5. Id. at 2363.
6. Id. at 2366.
7. Id. at 2367 (Souter, J., dissenting).
8. See., e.g., Sinochem
Int’l Co. v. Malaysia Int’l Shipping Corp., 127 S. Ct. 1184 (2007) (link) (admitting that phrases from precedent
using the term “jurisdiction” were “less than ‘felicitously’ crafted”);
Arbaugh v. Y&H Corp., 126 S. Ct. 1235, 1242
(2006) (link) (confessing
that the Court had “sometimes been profligate in its use of the term
[jurisdictional]”); Eberhart v. U.S., 126 S. Ct. 403, 407 (2005) (link) (per curiam)
(noting that the lower court’s improper characterization of a federal rule as
jurisdictional “is an error shared among the circuits, and that is was caused
in large part by imprecision in our prior cases”); Kontrick v. Ryan, 540
U.S. 443, 454 (2004) (link) (“Courts, including this Court, it
is true, have been less than meticulous . . . ; they have more than
occasionally used the term ‘jurisdictional’ to describe emphatic time
prescriptions in rules of court.”).
9. Arbaugh, 126
S. Ct. at 1245.
10. Eberhart, 126 S. Ct. at 405–06; Kontrick, 540 U.S. at 455.
11. See Kontrick, 540 U.S. 443.
12. See Eberhart, 126 S. Ct. 403. In another case, the Court had characterized
the Equal Access to Justice Act’s time limit for an applicant to seek
attorney’s fees against the U.S. government as a nonjurisdictional restriction
on a “mode of relief.” Scarborough v.
Principi, 541 U.S. 401, 405 (2004) (link).
13. Kontrick, 540 U.S. at 455.
14. See supra
note 8 and accompanying text.
15. Bowles
v. Russell, 127 S. Ct. 2360, 2370 (2007) (Souter, J., dissenting).
16. Id. at 2364.
17. See Scott Dodson, In Search of Removal Jurisdiction, 102 Nw. U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2008) (manuscript on file with Colloquy).
18. See Posting of Scott Dodson to Civil
Procedure Prof Blog, http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/civpro/2007/07/a-sleeper-case-.html
(July 9, 2007) (link).
19. See Zipes v.
Trans World Airlines, Inc., 455 U.S. 385, 394 (1982) (link).
20. See., e.g., Barnes v. Westinghouse Elec.
Corp., 962 F.2d 513, 516 (5th Cir. 1992) (link); Wilson v. GM Corp., 888 F.2d 779,
781 (11th Cir. 1989).
21. See 16 James
Wm. Moore, Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 107.41 (3d ed. 2006); cf. Caterpillar, Inc. v. Lewis, 519 U.S.
61 n.13 (1996) (referring to the one-year limit in dictum as “a
nonjurisdictional argument”). 22. See Dodson, supra note 17.
is federal statutes of limitations, which the Court will address this coming
Term when it hears John R. Sand &
Gravel Co. v. United States. 127 S. Ct. 2877 (2007) (link) (granting certiorari to consider
whether the six-year statute of limitations in the Tucker Act is a
jurisdictional limit).
24. See Arbaugh v. Y&H Corp., 126 S. Ct. 1235, 1245 (2006).
27. Id. at 1238.
v. U.S., 144 U.S. 263, 304 (1892) (link).
more on how the formal nature and functional effects of jurisdiction should
influence the framework for determining whether a limitation is jurisdictional
or not, see Dodson, supra note 17.
30. See., e.g., Griggs v. Provident Consumer
Discount Co., 459 U.S. 56, 61 (1982) (per curiam) (link); Browder v. Dep’t of Corr., 434
U.S. 257, 264, 271–72 (1978) (link); U.S. v. Robinson, 361 U.S. 220,
224 (1960) (link).
31. Cf., e.g., Becker v. Montgomery, 532
U.S. 757, 767 (2001) (link) (“[I]mperfections in noticing an appeal should
not be fatal where no genuine doubt exists about who is appealing, from what
judgment, to which appellate court.”); Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 180–81
(1962) (link) (holding that a Court of Appeals
could not dismiss an appeal sua sponte
for a violation of the rules governing notices of appeal when the parties fully
briefed the appeal and neither party was prejudiced by the violation).
32. Mark
A. Hall, The Jurisdictional Nature of the
Time to Appeal, 21 Ga. L. Rev.
399, 410 (1986).
33. Cf. Eberhart
v. U.S., 126 S. Ct. 403, 406–07 (2005) (discouraging reliance on the
mantra “mandatory and jurisdictional” as obscuring the distinction between
“mandatory” and “jurisdictional”); Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443, 454 (2004)
(noting that precedent used the term “jurisdictional” to mean merely
“emphatic”).
note that Justice Souter, in dissent, appears to misunderstand the difference
between “mandatory” and “jurisdictional” when he writes: “While a mandatory but nonjurisdictional
limit is enforceable at the insistence of a party claiming its benefit or by a
judge concerned with moving the docket, it may be waived or mitigated in exercising reasonable equitable discretion.” Bowles v. Russell, 127 S. Ct. 2360, 2368
(Souter, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). The better view is that a mandatory but nonjurisdictional limit is not
susceptible to equitable mitigation if the party claiming its benefit timely invokes
———— Copyright 2007 Northwestern University Cite as: 102 Nw. U. L. Rev. Colloquy 42 (2007), http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/colloquy/2007/21/. Persistent URL: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/colloquy/2007/21/
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