Opinion ID: 754566
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Direct Legislative Suspension of Court Order:

Text: 38 That the automatic stay provision does not manifestly prescribe a rule of decision in a pending case does not end our separation-of-powers inquiry. We also must closely examine the operation of the automatic stay provision, as construed by the state officials, in terms of the respective roles of Congress and the Judiciary in the suspension of existing court orders. We conclude that under the state officials' statutory construction the automatic stay provision is tantamount to direct legislative suspension of an existing court order, and we decline to embrace the state officials' construction of the statute because of this constitutional infirmity. 39 As has often been expressed, the central judgment of the Framers of the Constitution [was] that, within our political scheme, the separation of governmental powers into three coordinate Branches is essential to the preservation of liberty. Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 380, 109 S.Ct. 647, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989). The Framers intended that, as nearly as possible, each branch of government should confine itself to its assigned powers, and that the powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments, THE FEDERALIST NO. 48, at 146 (James Madison) (Roy Fairfield 2d ed., 1981) (emphasis added); see also INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 951, 103 S.Ct. 2764, 77 L.Ed.2d 317 (1983). Thus, each of the three general departments of government [must remain] entirely free from the control or coercive influence, direct or indirect, of either of the others. Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602, 629, 55 S.Ct. 869, 79 L.Ed. 1611 (1935) (quoted in Mistretta, 488 U.S. at 380, 109 S.Ct. 647) (alteration in Mistretta ). Actions of one branch which undertake directly a role reserved exclusively to another branch disrupt this constitutional balance of power. 40 The constitutional principle drawn from Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409 (1792), as articulated in Plaut, is that Congress cannot vest review of the decisions of Article III courts in officials of the Executive Branch. Plaut, 514 U.S. at 218, 115 S.Ct. 1447. We make no impermissible leap to suggest that this principle carries weight as well in a legislative suspension of a judicial order. Review of decisions of Article III courts, whether final judgments or orders implementing consent decrees, must be confined within the judicial branch. Because the suspension of a judicial order is a judicial act not to be undertaken directly by the Legislature, the Judiciary must play some role in the suspension of its own orders. Automatic legislative suspension of existing and presumptively valid judicial decrees violates this principle. 41 The PLRA automatic stay provision, as construed by the state officials, runs afoul of the separation of constitutional powers because it makes the stay self-executing, taking effect without judicial action. 13 Under the state officials' interpretation, courts may not postpone the effective date of the stay beyond sixty days, and the sixty-day extension is limited to situations involving good cause (not including general congestion of the court's calendar). See 18 U.S.C. § 3626(e)(3) (as amended in 1997). Should the court fail to enter a final order ruling on the motion to modify or terminate prospective relief before the expiration of the sixty-day postponement, the automatic stay takes effect without judicial action. 18 U.S.C. § 3626(e)(2) (as amended in 1997). Thus, under the state officials' statutory construction, even if the court postpones the effective date of the automatic stay by the full sixty days allowed, on the ninety-first day after filing its motion, the state officials could simply refuse to comply with existing court orders implementing the consent decrees because the state could claim that pursuant to a congressional mandate those orders automatically have no force. Thus, if we applied the statute in the manner urged by the state officials, the practical consequences of the PLRA automatic stay would result, quite simply, in a temporary legislative veto over court-ordered relief in an ongoing case before the court. Such direct legislative suspension of orders of Article III courts simply cannot be harmonized with our tripartite system of governance. 42 It is of course true that at any time Congress can alter the outcome of pending cases, or those involving ongoing supervisory court jurisdiction, by changing the substantive law that courts use in rendering decisions. Cf. Plaut, 514 U.S. at 226, 115 S.Ct. 1447 (Congress can always revise the judgments of Article III courts in one sense: When a new law makes clear that it is retroactive and thus is applied in pending cases). When that happens, however, the new law must still be applied in the particular case. The litigating parties are not entitled to act simply on Congress's command; they must go back to the court that issued the order to have the new law applied to their situation. Were Congress able to stay judicial orders directly, then any party subjected to a continuing court order might be able to bypass the issuing and reviewing courts entirely. The PLRA automatic stay, as construed by the state prison officials, impermissibly circumvents the judicial process. 43 The defendants argue that legislative authority to enact an automatic stay of judicial proceedings has long been established, as evidenced by the time-honored automatic stay in the bankruptcy arena. Upon the filing of a bankruptcy petition, § 362(a) of Title 11 requires a stay of civil litigation against a debtor unless the bankruptcy court determines otherwise. In upholding the constitutionality of this bankruptcy automatic stay, the Supreme Court explained that although [i]t is generally true that a judgment by a court of competent jurisdiction bears a presumption of regularity and is not thereafter subject to collateral attack, Congress, pursuant to its plenary constitutional power over bankruptcy, see U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 4, may by specific bankruptcy legislation create an exception to that principle and render judicial acts taken with respect to the person or property of a debtor whom the bankruptcy law protects nullities and vulnerable collaterally. Kalb v. Feuerstein, 308 U.S. 433, 438-39, 60 S.Ct. 343, 84 L.Ed. 370 (1940) (footnotes omitted). Thus, under the exclusive constitutional grant of power to Congress to regulate bankruptcy, Congress can limit the jurisdiction which courts, State or Federal, can exercise over the person and property of a debtor who duly invokes the bankruptcy law. Id. at 439, 60 S.Ct. 343. In contrast, once Congress establishes jurisdiction of the lower federal courts in an area outside Congress's enumerated Article I plenary powers, the courts are vested with judicial powers pursuant to Article III. Eash v. Riggins Trucking Inc., 757 F.2d 557, 562 (3d Cir.1985) (en banc). Having conferred jurisdiction upon the lower courts in this area, the Legislature cannot then displace the courts and itself exercise judicial power, save through impeachment. See Gary Lawson & Christopher D. Moore, The Executive Power of Constitutional Interpretation, 81 IOWA L.REV. 1267, 1317 (1996) ([N]o decision of any court of the United States can, under any circumstances ... agreeable to the constitution, be liable to a revision, or even suspension, by the legislature itself, in whom no judicial power of any kind appears to be vested, but the important one relative to impeachments.). As articulated by Madison, [t]he entire legislature can perform no judiciary act, and [w]ere the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. THE FEDERALIST NO. 47, at 141 (James Madison) (Roy Fairfield 2d ed., 1981) (quoting Montesquieu). 44 Our analysis convinces us that were we to interpret the PLRA's automatic stay provision as automatically suspending judicial orders without allowing for the exercise of the courts' equitable authority to stay the automatic stay, the PLRA automatic stay provision would be constitutionally deficient and could not stand. 14 45