Opinion ID: 107875
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: retroactivity on direct review.

Text: Upon reflection, I can no longer accept the rule first announced two years ago in Stovall v. Denno, supra , and reaffirmed today, which permits this Court to apply a new constitutional rule entirely prospectively, while making an exception only for the particular litigant whose case was chosen as the vehicle for establishing that rule. Indeed, I have concluded that Linkletter was right in insisting that all new rules of constitutional law must, at a minimum, be applied to all those cases which are still subject to direct review by this Court at the time the new decision is handed down. Matters of basic principle are at stake. In the classical view of constitutional adjudication, which I share, criminal defendants cannot come before this Court simply to request largesse. This Court is entitled to decide constitutional issues only when the facts of a particular case require their resolution for a just adjudication on the merits. See Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803). We do not release a criminal from jail because we like to do so, or because we think it wise to do so, but only because the government has offended constitutional principle in the conduct of his case. And when another similarly situated defendant comes before us, we must grant the same relief or give a principled reason for acting differently. We depart from this basic judicial tradition when we simply pick and choose from among similarly situated defendants those who alone will receive the benefit of a new rule of constitutional law. The unsound character of the rule reaffirmed today is perhaps best exposed by considering the following hypothetical. Imagine that the Second Circuit in the present case had anticipated the line of reasoning this Court subsequently pursued in Katz v. United States, supra, at 352-353, concludingas this Court there did that the underpinnings of Olmstead and Goldman have been so eroded by our subsequent decisions that the `trespass' doctrine there enunciated can no longer be regarded as controlling. Id., at 353. Would we have reversed the case on the ground that the principles the Second Circuit had announcedthough identical with those in Katz should not control because Katz is not retroactive? To the contrary, I venture to say that we would have taken satisfaction that the lower court had reached the same conclusion we subsequently did in Katz. If a new constitutional doctrine is truly right, we should not reverse lower courts which have accepted it; nor should we affirm those which have rejected the very arguments we have embraced. Anything else would belie the truism that it is the task of this Court, like that of any other, to do justice to each litigant on the merits of his own case. It is only if our decisions can be justified in terms of this fundamental premise that they may properly be considered the legitimate products of a court of law, rather than the commands of a super-legislature. Re-examination of prior developments in the field of retroactivity leads me irresistibly to the conclusion that the only solid disposition of this case lies in vacating the judgment of the Court of Appeals and in remanding this case to that court for further consideration in light of Katz.