Task: sc_lcdisagreement

What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to identify whether the court opinion mentions that one or more of the members of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed dissented. Focus on whether there exists any statement to this effect in the opinion, for example "divided," "dissented," "disagreed," "split.". A reference, without more, to the "majority" or "plurality" does not necessarily evidence dissent (the other judges may have concurred). If a case arose on habeas corpus, indicate dissent if either the last federal court or the last state court to review the case contained one. If the highest court with jurisdiction to hear the case declines to do so by a divided vote, indicate dissent. If the lower court denies an en banc petition by a divided vote and the Supreme Court discusses same, indicate dissent.

MR. Justice Harlan
announced the judgment of the Court and an opinion joined by Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Stewart.
In Ex parte Bakelite Corp., 279 U. S. 438, and Williams v. United States, 289 U. S. 553, this Court held that the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the United States Court of Claims were neither confined in jurisdiction nor protected in independence by Article III of the Constitution, but that both had been created by virtue of other, substantive, powers possessed by Congress under Article I. The Congress has since pronounced its disagreement by providing as to each that “such court is hereby declared to be a court established under article III of the Constitution of the United States.” The petitioners in these cases invite us to reaffirm the authority of our earlier decisions, and thus hold for naught these congressional pronouncements, at least as sought to be applied to judges appointed prior to their enactment.
No. 242 is a suit brought by individual employees in a New York state court to recover damages for breach of a collective bargaining agreement, and removed to the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York by the defendant employer on the ground of diversity of citizenship. The employees’ right to recover was sustained by a divided panel of the Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge J. Warren Madden, then an active judge of the Court of Claims sitting by designation of the Chief Justice of the United States under 28 U. S. C. § 293 (a). No. 481 is a criminal prosecution instituted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and resulting in a conviction for armed robbery. The trial was presided over by Judge Joseph R. Jackson, a retired judge of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals sitting by similar designation. The petitioner’s application for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals in forma pauperis, respecting the validity of this designation and alleged trial errors, was upheld by this Court last Term, 366 U. S. 712; we are now asked to review the Court of Appeals’ affirmance of his conviction. Because of the significance of the “designation” issue for the federal judicial system, we granted certiorari in the two cases, 368 U. S. 814, 815, limited to the question whether the judgment in either was vitiated by the respective participation of the judges named.
The claim advanced by the petitioners, that they were denied the protection of judges with tenure and compensation guaranteed by Article III, has nothing to do with the manner in which either of these judges conducted himself in these proceedings. No contention is made that either Judge Madden or Judge Jackson displayed a lack of appropriate judicial independence, or that either sought by his rulings to curry favor with Congress or the Executive. Both indeed enjoy statutory assurance of tenure and compensation, and were it not for the explicit provisions of Article III we should be quite unable to say that either judge’s participation even colorably denied the petitioners independent judicial hearings.
Article III, § 1, however, is explicit and gives the petitioners a basis for complaint without requiring them to point to particular instances of mistreatment in the record. It provides:
“The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.”
Apart from this provision, it is settled that neither the tenure nor salary of federal officers is constitutionally protected from impairment by Congress. Crenshaw v. United States, 134 U. S. 99, 107-108; cf. Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 How. 402, 416-418. The statutory declaration, therefore, that the judges of these two courts should serve during good behavior and with undiminished salary, see note 5, supra, was ineffective to bind any subsequent Congress unless those judges were invested at appointment with the protections of Article III. United States v. Fisher, 109 U. S. 143, 145; see McAllister v. United States, 141 U. S. 174, 186. And the petitioners naturally point to the Bakelite and Williams cases, supra, as establishing that no such constitutional protection was in fact conferred.
The distinction referred to in those cases between “constitutional” and “legislative” courts has been productive of much confusion and controversy. Because of the highly theoretical nature of the problem in its present context, we would be well advised to decide these cases on narrower grounds if any are fairly available. But for reasons that follow, we find ourselves unable to do so.
I.
No challenge to the authority of the judges was filed in the course of the proceedings before them in either case. The Solicitor General, who submitted briefs and arguments for the United States, has seized upon this circumstance to suggest that the petitioners should be precluded by the so-called de facto doctrine from questioning the validity of these designations for the first time on appeal.
Whatever may be the rule when a judge’s authority is challenged at the earliest practicable moment, as it was in United States v. American-Foreign S. S. Corp., 363 U. S. 685, in other circumstances involving judicial authority this Court has described it as well settled “that where there is an office to be filled and one acting under color of authority fills the office and discharges its duties, his actions are those of an officer de facto and binding upon the public.” McDowell v. United States, 159 U. S. 596, 602. The rule is founded upon an obviously sound policy of preventing litigants from abiding the outcome of a lawsuit and then overturning it if adverse upon a technicality of which they were previously aware. Although a United States Attorney may be permitted on behalf of the public to upset an order issued upon defective authority, Frad v. Kelly, 302 U. S. 312, a private litigant ordinarily may not. Ball v. United States, 140 U. S. 118, 128-129.
The rule does not obtain, of course, when the alleged defect of authority operates also as a limitation on this Court’s appellate jurisdiction. Ayrshire Collieries Corp. v. United States, 331 U. S. 132 (three-judge court); United States v. Emholt, 105 U. S. 414 (certificate of divided opinion). In other circumstances as well, when the statute claimed to restrict authority is not merely technical but embodies a strong policy concerning the proper administration of judicial business, this Court has treated the alleged defect as “jurisdictional” and agreed to consider it on direct review even though not raised at the earliest practicable opportunity. E. g., American Construction Co. v. Jacksonville, T. & K. W. R. Co., 148 U. S. 372, 387-388.
A fortiori is this so when the challenge is based upon nonfrivolous constitutional grounds. In McDowell v. United States itself, supra, at 598-599, the Court, while, holding that any defect in statutory authorization for a particular intracircuit assignment was immunized from examination by the de facto doctrine, specifically passed upon and upheld the constitutional authority of Congress to provide for such an assignment. And in Lamar v. United States, 241 U. S. 103, 117-118, the claim that an intercircuit assignment violated the criminal venue restrictions of the Sixth Amendment and usurped the presidential appointing power under Art. II, § 2, was heard here and determined upon its merits, despite the fact that it had not been raised in the District Court or in the Court of Appeals or even in this Court until the filing of a supplemental brief upon a second request for review.
The alleged defect of authority here relates to basic constitutional protections designed in part for the benefit of litigants. See O’Donoghue v. United States, 289 U. S. 516, 532-534. It should be examinable at least on direct review, where its consideration encounters none of the objections associated with the principle of res judicata, that there be an end to litigation. At the most is weighed in opposition the disruption to sound appellate process entailed by entertaining objections not raised below, and that is plainly insufficient to overcome the strong interest of the federal judiciary in maintaining the constitutional plan of separation of powers. So this Court has con-eluded on an analogous balance struck to protect against intruding federal jurisdiction into the area constitutionally reserved to the States: Whether diversity of citizenship exists may be questioned on direct review for the first time in this Court. Mansfield, C. & L. M. R. Co. v. Swan, 111 U. S. 379, 382; City of Gainesville v. Brown-Crummer Investment Co., 277 U. S. 54, 59. We hold that it is similarly open to these petitioners to challenge the constitutional authority of the judges below.
II.
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found it unnecessary to reach the question whether Judge Jackson enjoyed constitutional security of tenure and compensation. It held that even if he did not, Congress might authorize his assignment to courts in the District of Columbia, by virtue of its power “To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever” over the District. Art. I, § 8, cl. 17. The Solicitor General, in support of that ruling, argues here that because the criminal charge against petitioner Lurk was violation of a local statute, D. C. Code, 1961, § 22^2901, rather than of one national in application, its trial did not require the assignment of an Article III judge.
The question thus raised is itself of constitutional dimension, and one which we need not reach if an Article III judge was in fact assigned. In the companion case, No. 242, the necessity for such a judge is uncontested. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sat to determine a question of state contract law presented for its decision solely by reason of the diverse citizenship of the litigants. Authority for the Federal Government to decide questions of state law exists only by virtue of the Diversity Clause in Article III. Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64; see Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272 284. For this reason, the question whether Judge Madden enjoyed constitutional independence is inescapably presented. Since decision of that question involves considerations bearing directly upon the constitutional status of Judge Jackson, we deem it appropriate to dispose of both cases on the same grounds, without at present intimating any view as to the correctness of the holding below by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
III.
The next question is whether the character of the judges who sat in these cases may be determined without reference to the character of the courts to which they were originally appointed. If it were plain that these judges were invested upon confirmation with Article III tenure and compensation, it would be unnecessary for present purposes to consider the constitutional status of the Court of Claims and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals.
No such course, however, appears to be open. The statutes under which Judge Madden and Judge Jackson were appointed speak of service only on those courts. 28 U. S. C. §§ 171, 211. They were not, as were the judges selected for the late Commerce Court, appointed as “additional circuit judges,” Act of June 18, 1910, c. 309, 36 Stat. 539, 540, whose tenure might be constitutionally secured regardless of the fortunes of their courts. See 50 Cong. Rec. 5409-5418 (1913); Donegan v. Dyson, 269 U. S. 49; Frankfurter and Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court (1927), 168-173. It is true that at the time of Judge Jackson’s appointment there was in force a statute authorizing assignment of Court of Customs and Patent Appeals judges to serve on the courts of the District of Columbia. Act of September 14, 1922, c. 306, § 5, 42 Stat. 837, 839. At that time, however, before the O’Donoghue decision, there seems to have been a consensus that the courts of the District were not confined or protected by Article III; as late as 1930, this Court regarded it as “recognized that the courts of the District of Columbia are not created under the judiciary article of the Constitution but are legislative courts....” Federal Radio Comm’n v. General Electric Co., 281 U. S. 464, 468; and see Katz, Federal Legislative Courts, 43 Harv. L. Rev. 894, 899-903 (1930). The 1922 Act cannot therefore be viewed ex proprio vigore as conferring Article III status on judges subsequently appointed to the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals.
A more novel suggestion is that the assignment statute itself, 28 U. S. C. §§ 291-296, authorized the Chief Justice to appoint inferior Article III judges in the course of designating them for service on Article III courts. See Shartel, Federal Judges — Appointment, Supervision, and Removal — Some Possibilities under the Constitution, 28 Mich. L. Rev. 485 (1930); cf. Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371, 397-398; Rice v. Ames, 180 U. S. 371, 378. But we need not consider the constitutional questions involved in this suggestion, for the statute does not readily lend itself to such a construction. If nothing else, the authority given the Chief Justice in 28 U. S. C. § 295 to revoke assignments previously made is wholly inconsistent with a reading of the statute as empowering him to appoint inferior Article III judges. Judges assigned by the Chief Justice who are not previously endowed with constitutional security of tenure and compensation thus can gain nothing by the designation.
It is significant that Congress did not enact the present broad assignment statute until after it had declared the Court of Claims and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals to be constitutional courts. Act of August 25, 1958, 72 Stat. 848. A major purpose of these declarations was to eliminate uncertainty whether regular Article III judges might be assigned to assist in the business of those courts when disability or disqualification made it difficult for them to obtain a quorum. Those doubts, suggested by dicta in Ex parte Bakelite Corp., 279 U. S. 438, 460, would be expanded rather than allayed were we to hold that the judges of the Court of Claims and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals enjoy the protections of Article III while leaving at large the status of those courts. For these various reasons, the constitutional quality of tenure and compensation extended Judges Madden and Jackson at the time of their confirmation must be deemed to have depended upon the constitutional status of the courts to which they were primarily appointed.
IV.
In determining the constitutional character of the Court of Claims and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, as we are thus led to do, we may not disregard Congress’ declaration that they were created under Article III. Of course, Congress may not by fiat overturn the constitutional decisions of this Court, but the legislative history of the 1953 and 1958 declarations makes plain that it was far from attempting any such thing. Typical is a statement in the 1958 House Report that the purpose of the legislation was to “declare which of the powers Congress was intending to exercise when the court was created.” H. R. Rep. No. 2349, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. 3 (1958); accord, H. R. Rep. No. 695, 83d Cong., 1st Sess. 3, 5, 7 (1953); and see S. Rep. No. 275, 83d Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1953), substituted for S. Rep. No. 261, 83d Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1953); 99 Cong. Rec. 8943, 8944 (1953) (remarks of Senator Gore).
“Subsequent legislation which declares the intent of an earlier law,” this Court has noted, “is not, of course, conclusive in determining w'hat the previous Congress meant. But the later law is entitled to weight when it comes to the problem of construction.” Federal Housing Administration v. Darlington, Inc., 358 U. S. 84, 90; accord, New York, P. & N. R. Co. v. Peninsula Exchange, 240 U. S. 34, 39. Especially is this so when the Congress has been stimulated by decisions of this Court to investigate the historical materials involved and has drawn from them a contrary conclusion. United States v. Hutcheson, 312 U. S. 219, 235-237. As examination of the House and Senate Reports makes evident, that is what occurred here. E. g., S. Rep. No. 2309, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. 2-3 (1958); H. R. Rep. No. 695, 83d Cong., 1st Sess. 3-5 (1953).
At the time when Bakelite and Williams were decided, the Court did not have the benefit of this congressional understanding. The Williams case, for example, arose under the Legislative Appropriation Act of June 30, 1932, c. 314, § 107 (a)(5), 47 Stat. 382, 402, which reduced the salary of all judges “except judges whose compensation may not, under the Constitution, be diminished during their continuance in office.” Mr. Justice Sutherland, who wrote the Court’s opinions in both Williams and O’Don-oghue, was plainly disadvantaged by the absence of congressional intimation as to which judges of which courts were to be deemed exempted. See O’Donoghue v. United States, 289 U. S. 516, 529.
In the Bakelite case, to be sure, Mr. Justice Van De-vanter said of an argument drawn from tenuous evidence of congressional understanding that it “mistakenly assumes that whether a court is of one class or the other depends on the intention of Congress, whereas the true test lies in the power under which the court was created and in the jurisdiction conferred.” 279 U. S., at 459. Yet he would hardly have denied that explicit evidence of legislative intendment concerning the factors he thought controlling may be relevant and indeed highly persuasive. In any event, the Bakelite dictum did not embarrass the Court in deciding O’Donoghue, where it looked searchingly at “congressional practice” to determine what classification that body “recognizes.” 289 U. S., at 548-550. We think the forthright statement of understanding embraced in the 1953 and 1958 declarations may be taken as similarly persuasive evidence for the problem now before us.
To give due weight to these congressional declarations is not of course to compromise the authority or responsibility of this Court as the ultimate expositor of the Constitution. The Bakelite and Williams decisions have long been considered of questionable soundness. See, e. g., Brown, The Rent in Our Judicial Armor, 10 G. W. L. Rev. 127 (1941); Hart and Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System (1953), 348-351; 1 Moore, Federal Practice (2d ed. 1961), 71 n. 21. They stand uneasily next to O’Donoghue, much of whose reasoning in sustaining the Article III status of the District of Columbia superior courts seems applicable to the Court of Claims and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals. In Pope v. United States, 323 U. S. 1, 13-14, where the Solicitor General argued at length against the continued vitality of Bakelite and Williams, their authority was regarded as an open question.
Furthermore, apart from this Court’s considered practice not to apply stare decisis as rigidly in constitutional as in nonconstitutional cases, e. g., United States v. South Buffalo R. Co., 333 U. S. 771, 774-775; see Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 405-408 and n. 1-3 (Brandéis, J., dissenting), there is the fact that Congress has acted on its understanding and has provided for assignment of judges who have made decisions that are now said to be impeachable. In these circumstances, the practical consideration underlying the doctrine of stare decisis — protection of generated expectations — actually militates in favor of reexamining the decisions. We are well-advised, therefore, to regard the questions decided in those cases as entirely open to reconsideration.
Y.
The Constitution nowhere makes reference to “legislative courts.” The power given Congress in Art. I, § 8, cl. 9, “To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court,” plainly relates to the “inferior Courts” provided for in Art. Ill, § 1; it has never been relied on for establishment of any other tribunals.
The concept of a legislative court derives from the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall in American Insurance Co. v. Canter, 1 Pet. 511, dealing with courts established in a territory. A cargo of cotton salvaged from a wreck off the coast of Florida had been purchased by Canter at a judicial sale ordered by a court at Key West invested by the territorial legislature with jurisdiction over cases of salvage. The insurers, to whom the property in the cargo had been abandoned by the owners, brought a libel for restitution, claiming in part that the prior decree was void because not rendered in a court created by Congress, as required for the exercise of admiralty jurisdiction under Article III. Chief Justice Marshall for the Court swept this objection aside by noting that the Superior Courts of Florida, which had been created by Congress, were staffed with judges appointed for only four years, and concluded that Article III did not apply in the territories:
“These Courts, then, are not constitutional Courts, in which the judicial power conferred by the Constitution on the general government, can be deposited. They are incapable of receiving it. They are legislative Courts, created in virtue of the general right of sovereignty which exists in the government, or in virtue of that clause which enables Congress to make all needful rules and regulations, respecting the territory belonging to the United States.” 1 Pet., at 546.
By these arresting observations the Chief Justice certainly did not mean to imply that the case heard by the Key West court was not one of admiralty jurisdiction otherwise properly justiciable in a Federal District Court sitting in one of the States. Elsewhere in the opinion he distinctly referred to the provisions of Article III to show that it was such a case. 1 Pet., at 545. All the Chief Justice meant, and what the case has ever after been taken to establish, is that in the territories cases and controversies falling within the enumeration of Article III may be heard and decided in courts constituted without regard to the limitations of that article; courts, that is, having judges of limited tenure and entertaining business beyond the range of conventional cases and controversies.
The reasons for this are not difficult to appreciate so long as the character of the early territories and some of the practical problems arising from their administration are kept in mind. The entire governmental responsibility in a territory where there was no state government to assume the burden of local regulation devolved upon the National Government. This meant that courts had to be established and staffed with sufficient judges to handle the general jurisdiction that elsewhere would have been exercised in large part by the courts of a State. But when the territories began entering into statehood, as they soon did, the authority of the territorial courts over matters of state concern ceased; and in a time when the size of the federal judiciary was still relatively small, that left the National Government with a significant number of territorial judges on its hands and no place to put them. When Florida was admitted as a State, for example, Congress replaced three territorial courts of general jurisdiction comprising five judges with one Federal District Court and one judge.
At the same time as the absence of a federal structure in the territories produced problems not foreseen by the Framers of Article III, the realities of territorial government typically made it less urgent that judges there enjoy the independence from Congress and the President envisioned by that article. For the territories were not ruled immediately from Washington; in a day of poor roads and slow mails, it was unthinkable that they should be. Rather, Congress left municipal law to be developed largely by the territorial legislatures, within the framework of organic acts and subject to a retained power of veto. The scope of self-government exercised under these delegations was nearly as broad as that enjoyed by the States, and the freedom of the territories to dispense with protections deemed inherent in a separation of governmental powers was as fully recognized.
Against this historical background, it is hardly surprising that Chief Justice Marshall decided as he did. It would have been doctrinaire in the extreme to deny the right of Congress to invest judges of its creation with authority to dispose of the judicial business of the territories. It would have been at least as dogmatic, having recognized the right, to fasten on those judges a guarantee of tenure that Congress could not put to use and that the exigencies of the territories did not require. Marshall chose neither course; conscious as ever of his responsibility to see the Constitution work, he recognized a greater flexibility in Congress to deal with problems arising outside the normal context of a federal system.
The same confluence of practical considerations that dictated the result in Canter has governed the decision in later cases sanctioning the creation of other courts with judges of limited tenure. In United States v. Coe, 155 U. S. 76, 85-86, for example, the Court sustained the authority of the Court of Private Land Claims to adjudicate claims under treaties to land in the territories, but left it expressly open whether such a course might be followed within the States. The Choctaw and Chickasaw Citizenship Court was similarly created to determine questions of tribal membership relevant to property claims within Indian territory under the exclusive control of the National Government. See Stephens v. Cherokee Nation, 174 U. S. 445; Ex parte Joins, 191 U. S. 93; Wallace v. Adams, 204 U. S. 415. Upon like considerations, Article III has been viewed as inapplicable to courts created in unincorporated territories outside the mainland, Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244, 266-267; Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U. S. 298, 312-313; cf. Dorr v. United States, 195 U. S. 138, 145, 149, and to the consular courts established by concessions from foreign countries, In re Ross, 140 U. S. 453, 464-465, 480.
The touchstone of decision in all these cases has been the need to exercise the jurisdiction then and there and for a transitory period. Whether constitutional limitations on the exercise of judicial power have been held inapplicable has depended on the particular local setting, the practical necessities, and the possible alternatives. When the peculiar reasons justifying investiture of judges with limited tenure have not been present, the Canter holding has not been deemed controlling. O’Donoghue v. United States, 289 U. S. 516, 536-539.
Since the conditions obtaining in one territory have been assumed to exist in each, this Court has in the past entertained a presumption that even those territorial judges who have been extended statutory assurances of life tenure and undiminished compensation have been so favored as a matter of legislative grace and not of constitutional compulsion. McAllister v. United States, 141 U. S. 174, 186. By a parity of reasoning, however, the presumption should be reversed when Congress creates courts the continuing exercise of whose jurisdiction is unembarrassed by such practical difficulties. See Mookini v. United States, 303 U. S. 201, 205. As the Bakelite and Williams opinions recognize, the Court of Claims and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals were created to carry into effect powers enjoyed by the National Government over subject matter — roughly, payment of debts and collection of customs revenue — and not over localities. What those opinions fail to deal with is whether that distinction deprives American Insurance Co. v. Canter of controlling force.
The Bakelite opinion did not inquire whether there might be such a distinction. After sketching the history of the territorial and consular courts, it continued at once:
“Legislative courts also may be created as special tribunals to examine and determine various matters, arising between the government and others, which from their nature do not require judicial determination and yet are susceptible of it.” 279 U. S., at 451.
Since in the Court’s view the jurisdiction conferred on both the Court of Claims and the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals included “nothing which inherently or necessarily requires judicial determination,” both could have been and were created as legislative courts.
We need not pause to assess the Court’s characterization of the jurisdiction conferred on those courts, beyond indicating certain reservations about its accuracy. Nor need we now explore the extent to which Congress may commit the execution of even “inherently” judicial business to tribunals other than Article III courts. We may and do assume, for present purposes, that none of the jurisdiction vested in our two courts is of that sort, so that all of it might be committed for final determination to non-Article III tribunals, be they denominated legislative courts or administrative agencies.
But because Congress may employ such tribunals assuredly does not mean that it must. This is the crucial non sequitur of the Bakelite and Williams opinions. Each assumed that because Congress might have assigned specified jurisdiction to an administrative agency, it must be deemed to have done so even though it assigned that jurisdiction to a tribunal having every appearance of a court and composed of judges enjoying statutory assurances of life tenure and undiminished compensation. In so doing, each appears to have misunderstood the thrust of the celebrated observation by Mr. Justice Curtis, that
.. there are matters, involving public rights, which may be presented in such form that the judicial power is capable of acting on them, and which are susceptible of judicial determination, but which congress may or may not bring within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, as it may deem proper.” Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 284.
This passage, cited in both the Bakelite and Williams opinions, plainly did not mean that the matters referred to could not be entrusted to Article III courts. Quite the contrary, the explicit predicate to Justice Curtis’ argument was that such courts could exercise judicial power over such cases. For the very statute whose authorization of summary distress proceedings was sustained in the Murray case, also authorized the distrainee to bring suit to arrest the levy against the United States in a Federal District Court. And as to this, the author of the opinion stated, just before his more trenchant remark quoted above:
“The United States consents that this fact of indebtedness may be drawn in question by a suit against them. Though they might have withheld their consent, we think that, by granting it, nothing which may not be a subject of judicial cognizance is brought before the court.”
Thus Murray’s Lessee, far from furnishing authority against the proposition that the Court of Claims is a constitutional court, actually supports it.
To deny that Congress may create tribunals under Article III for the sole purpose of adjudicating matters that it might have reserved for legislative or executive decision would be to deprive it of the very choice that Mr. Justice Curtis insisted it enjoys. Of course possession of the choice, assuming it is coextensive with the range of matters confided to the courts, subjects those courts to the continuous possibility that their entire jurisdiction may be withdrawn. See Williams v. United States, 289 U. S. 553, 580-581. But the threat thus facing their independence is not in kind or effect different from that sustained by all inferior federal courts. The great constitutional compromise that resulted in agreement upon Art. Ill, § 1, authorized but did not obligate Congress to create inferior federal courts. I Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention (1911), 118, 124 — 125; The Federalist, No. 81 (Wright ed. 1961), at 509 (Hamilton). Once created, they passed almost a century without exercising any very significant jurisdiction. Warren, New Light on the History of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789, 37 Harv. L. Rev. 49, 65-70 (1923); Frankfurter, Distribution of Judicial Power Between United States and State Courts, 13 Cornell L. Q. 499 (1928). Throughout this period and beyond it up to today, they remained constantly subject to jurisdictional curtailment. Turner v. Bank of North America, 4 Dall. 8, 10 note (Chase, J.); Cary v. Curtis, 3 How. 236, 245; Sheldon v. Sill, 8 How. 441, 449; Kline v. Burke Construction Co., 260 U. S. 226, 233-234. Even if it should be conceded that the Court of Claims or the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals is any more likely to be supplanted, we do not think the factor of constitutional significance.
What has been said should suffice to demonstrate that whether a tribunal is to be recognized as one created under Article III depends basically upon whether its establishing legislation complies with the limitations of that article; whether, in other words, its business is the federal business there specified and its judges and judgments are allowed the independence, there expressly or impliedly made requisite. To ascertain whether the courts now under inquiry can meet those tests, we must turn to examine their history, the development of their functions, and their present characteristics.
VI.
A. Court of Claims. — The Court of Claims was created by the Act of February 24, 1855, c. 122, 10 Stat. 612, primarily to relieve the pressure on Congress caused by the volume of private bills. As an innovation the court was at first regarded as an experiment, and some of its creators were reluctant to give it all the attributes of a court by making its judgments final; instead it was authorized to hear claims and report its findings of fact and opinions to Congress, together with drafts of bills designed to carry its recommendations into effect. §7, 10 Stat. 613; see Cong. Globe, 33d Cong., 2d Sess. 70-72 (1854) (remarks of Senators Brodhead and Hunter). From the outset, however, a majority of the court’s proponents insisted that its judges be given life tenure as a means of assuring independence of judgment, and their proposal won acceptance in the Act. § 1,10 Stat. 612; see Cong. Globe, 33d Cong., 2d Sess. 71, 108-109 (Senator Hunter); 72 (Senator Clayton); 106 (Senator Brodhead); 110 (Senator Pratt); 114, 902 (the votes). Indeed there are substantial indications in the debates that Congress thought it was establishing a court under Article III. Cong. Globe, 33d Cong., 2d Sess. 108-109 (Senator Hunter); 110-111 (Senator Pratt); 111 (Senator Clayton); 113 (Senators Stuart and Douglas).
By the end of 1861, however, it was apparent that the limited powers conferred on the court were insufficient to relieve Congress from the laborious necessity of examining the merits of private bills. In his State of the Union message that year, President Lincoln recommended that the legislative design to provide for the independent adjudication of claims against the United States be brought to fruition by making the judgments of the Court of Claims final. The pertinent text of his address is as follows, Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., Appendix, p. 2:
“It is as much the duty of Government to render prompt justice against itself, in favor of citizens, as it is to administer the same between private individuals. The investigation and adjudication of claims, in their nature belong to the judicial department.... It was intended by the organization of the Court of Claims mainly to remove this branch of business from the Halls of Congress; but while the court has proved to be an effective and valuable means of investigation, it in great degree fails to effect the object of its creation, for want of power to make its judgments final.”
By the Act of March 3, 1863, c. 92, § 5, 12 Stat. 765, 766, Congress adopted the President’s recommendation and made the court’s judgments final, with appeal to the Supreme Court provided in certain cases. The significance of this nearly contemporaneous enactment for the light it sheds on the aims of the 1855 Congress is apparent.
There was one further impediment. Section 14 of the 1863 Act, 12 Stat. 768, provided that “no money shall be paid out of the treasury for any claim passed upon by the court of claims till after an appropriation therefor shall be estimated for by the Secretary of the Treasury.” In Gordon v. United States, 2 Wall. 561, this Court refused to review

Question: Does the court opinion mention that one or more of the members of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed dissented?
A. Yes
B. No
Answer:

Answer: A