Opinion ID: 1722350
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Legislature's Retroactive Reopening of Final Judgments

Text: In Plaut, 514 U.S. at 225, 115 S.Ct. 1447, the Supreme Court applied the third component of the separation-of-powers principle to strike down a statute that required courts to reopen judgments that had previously become final. The Supreme Court elaborated on the third component of the separation-of-powers principle as it affected the contours of the judicial power: Article III establishes a `judicial department' with the `province and duty ... to say what the law is' in particular cases and controversies. Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803).[ [7] ] The record of history shows that the Framers crafted this charter of the judicial department with an expressed understanding that it gives the Federal Judiciary the power, not merely to rule on cases, but to decide them, subject to review only by superior courts in the Article III hierarchywith an understanding, in short, that `a judgment conclusively resolves the case' because `a judicial Power' is one to render dispositive judgments. Easterbrook, Presidential Review, 40 Case W. Res. L.Rev. 905, 926 (1990). By retroactively commanding the federal courts to reopen final judgements, Congress has violated this fundamental principle. Plaut, 514 U.S. at 218-19, 115 S.Ct. 1447 (second emphasis added). [8] The Supreme Court continued: It is the obligation of the last court in the [Article III] hierarchy that rules on the case to give effect to Congress's latest enactment, even when that has the effect of overturning the judgment of an inferior court, since each court, at every level, must `decide according to existing laws.' ... Having achieved finality, however, a judicial decision becomes the last word of the judicial department with regard to a particular case or controversy, and Congress may not declare by retroactive legislation that the law applicable to that very case was something other than what the courts said it was. Plaut, 514 U.S. at 227, 115 S.Ct. 1447 (emphasis in original) (citations omitted). Thus, the core judicial power is the power to declare finally the rights of the parties, in a particular case or controversy, based on the law at the time the judgment becomes final. In the words of the Supreme Court: The finality that a court can pronounce is no more than what the law in existence at the time of judgment will permit it to pronounce. If the law then applicable says that the judgment may be reopened for certain reasons, that limitation is built into the judgment itself, and its finality is so conditioned. Plaut, 514 U.S. at 234, 115 S.Ct. 1447. Therefore, to the extent § 26-17A-1 is applied retroactively to change the reopening provisions incorporated into paternity judgments that became final before that section was enacted, it impinges on the core judicial power. [9] This conclusion is buttressed by the Plaut Court's rejection of the argument that Congress could amend Rule 60(b), Fed.R.Civ.P., to reopen final judgments retroactively. [10] While the Plaut Court recognized that Congress could amend Rule 60(b), Fed.R.Civ. P., [11] it stated that to give such an amendment retroactive effect would impermissibly change the law that was incorporated into the final judgment. Plaut, 514 U.S. at 234-37, 115 S.Ct. 1447. [12] Similarly, the Alabama Legislature cannot retroactively amend Rule 60(b), Ala. R. Civ. App., to change the law of finality that was incorporated into final judgments before the Legislature's amendment. The paternity judgment in this case became final in 1986, approximately eight years before § 26-17A-1 became law. Thus, the trial court and the Court of Civil Appeals erred in applying § 26-17A-1 to change the rules of finality incorporated into M.A.B.'s 1986 final judgment of paternity. [13]