Court Opinion

ID: 9492020
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:30:17.856494+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:04.145663
License: Public Domain

LEVAL, Circuit Judge
(with whom Judge OAKES concurs, and Judge CALABRESI concurs as to Part II) concurring in part:
With one reservation outlined below, I join in the majority’s opinion.
I. In civil actions relating to prison conditions (“prison litigation”), the Prison Litigation Reform Act (“PLRA”) grants the defendant the right to immediate termination of the prospective effect of injunctions to the extent their mandates do not meet the statute’s need-narrowness-intrusiveness test. See 18 U.S.C. § 3626(b)(2). The plaintiffs contend that a congressional enactment requiring such termination undoes the judgment of a federal court and thereby violates the Constitution’s separation of powers.
*168Although Congress has indeed required the alteration of a federal court’s judgment, it has done so in a permissible manner. In § 3626(a), Congress limits the power of the courts to grant prospective relief in prison litigation to circumstances that satisfy the need-narrowness-intrusiveness test. Subsection (c)(1) further provides that a “court shall not enter or approve a consent decree” unless the decree satisfies the same test. Under subsection (b)(2), previously-entered consent decrees are terminable if they do not meet the need-narrowness-intrusiveness test. Because subsection (c)(l)’s limitation on the courts’ remedial powers and subsection (b)(2)’s provision for termination turn on the identical test, courts today would lack the power to enter the consent decrees that are terminable. All Congress has done in § 3626(b)(2), then, is to bar the courts from continuing to enforce previously entered injunctions of the kind they now lack the power to command.
As I understand it, the Supreme Court’s opinion in Pennsylvania v. Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co., 59 U.S. 421, 18 How. 421, 15 L.Ed. 435 (1855) (“Wheeling Bridge II”), holds that a congressional interference with a federal court’s judgment in such circumstances does not infringe the separation of powers. In an earlier case, Pennsylvania v. Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co., 54 U.S. 518, 578, 13 How. 518, 14 L.Ed. 249 (1851) (“Wheeling Bridge I”), the Supreme Court had ordered a bridge raised or removed because it was a public nuisance that impeded navigation. Congress, however, then passed legislation designating the bridge a post-road. See Wheeling Bridge II, 59 U.S. (18 How.) at 429. Because, as a matter of law, a congressionally-designated post-road could not be adjudged a public nuisance, the Court was no longer empowered to order the abatement it had mandated in Wheeling Bridge I. The Supreme Court thus ruled in Wheeling Bridge II that Congress could lawfully require termination of the prospective effect of the earlier injunction. See Wheeling Bridge II, 59 U.S. (18 How.) at 431-32, 436.
I understand Wheeling Bridge II to support the proposition that, where a federal court’s injunction has ongoing, prospective effect, and Congress modifies the law upon which it was predicated so that the court is no longer empowered to issue such an order, Congress may give the defendant the right to the termination of the injunction. In this case, Congress has done just that.
I join in the portion of the majority opinion that so rules, as well as in its rejection of the plaintiffs’ contentions that § 3626(b)(2) violates constitutional principles of equal protection and due process.
II. I do not join in Part IIA of the majority’s opinion. The panel opinion had expressed views that, once the consent decrees were terminated, the plaintiffs would continue to have contract rights arising from the settlement agreements that underlay the consent decrees, and that the plaintiffs might enforce those contract rights in state courts. The in banc majority opinion disagrees. It asserts first that the settlement agreements underlying the consent decrees cannot stand as enforceable contracts once the consent decrees are vacated; it then adds that, in any event, the PLRA does not tolerate the survival of such contract rights.
I express neither agreement nor disagreement with these views. In my view, those issues are simply not before us. The issues on which the parties have sought our ruling are whether § 3626(b)(2) requires termination of consent decrees that do not comply with the need-narrowness-intrusiveness test, and whether such termination comports with the Constitution. We answer each of those questions in the affirmative.
But neither we nor the district court have been asked to adjudicate whether, after the termination of the consent decrees, prisoners may bring contract actions in state courts predicated on the settle*169ment agreements that underlie the consent decrees. The majority’s views on that question play no role whatsoever in supporting the conclusions it reaches on the issues that are before us. The proposition that plaintiffs would be barred, after the termination of the consent decrees, from enforcing contract rights is not part of the reasoning that leads us to conclude the decrees must be terminated. The entire discussion is dictum. These are advisory views that have rio legal force.
I assume the majority has included the discussion because of its strong disagreement with the contrary views stated in the panel’s opinion. But we have vacated the panel’s opinion and have substituted the opinion of the in banc court. The panel opinion no longer stands as an opinion of the Second Circuit. If a majority of the court feels a need to make clear that it does not endorse the views expressed in the panel opinion, it could simply say so. I do not understand why disagreement with a vacated panel opinion justifies our undertaking to adjudicate an issue not presented in this litigation.
I do not mean to imply that the discussion should necessarily be omitted because it is advisory. I recognize that in well-chosen instances, advisory discussion in a court opinion can serve a useful purpose. My greater concern is that the majority seems to present the discussion as a holding. A reader of the majority opinion, who did not take care to compare this discussion with the relief granted, might easily conclude that the Second Circuit has adjudicated this question. We have done no such thing, and in fact have no power to do so in a case that does not put that question before us.
To avoid confusion as to the state of the law, courts have an obligation when they indulge in advisory discussion to identify it as such. A court’s holding, including the reasoning underlying it, has the force of law. Within the sphere of that court’s authority, the public and subservient courts are legally bound to follow its ruling. On the other hand, dictum — even when uttered by the highest court in the land — has no legal force. A court’s power to make law derives solely from its obligation to decide cases, and extends no further than the reasoning that underlies the judgment. See Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 399, 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821) (Marshall, C.J.) (“It is a maxim, not to be disregarded, that general expressions, in every opinion, are to be taken in connection with the case in which those expressions are used. If they go beyond the case, they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit when the very point is presented for decision.”).1 Thus, while dictum may help observers to predict how the law may develop if and when the court eventually rules on a question, it does not have the force of law. No one is legally obligated to follow it.
If litigant? or courts come to consider in the future whether state law contract rights survive the termination of the consent decrees under the PLRA’s §'3636(b)(2), they should recognize that the Second Circuit has not adjudicated that question. It has merely expressed *170advisory views that may or may not be found persuasive.2
In response to this opinion, Judge Jacobs, joined by a majority of the court, asserts that the majority’s rejection of the survival of contract rights “is not a core holding, but neither is it dictum, let.alone dictum that is ‘advisory’ and ‘gratuitous.’ ” He asserts that the passage is “needed and useful.” (Judge Jacobs stops short of ever directly asserting that the discussion is a “holding.” Perhaps that omission is intentional.)
I think it reasonable for Judge Jacobs to insist that the discussion is “useful.” The discussion expresses my colleagues’ disagreement with the panel on an issue that is likely to arise. The publication of such a debate may well be useful. When the question arises in litigation, the judges charged with deciding whether the PLRA tolerates or forbids the survival of contract rights may well benefit from the airing of the views of the Second Circuit’s judges. My main concern, as stated above, is not with my colleagues’ expression of their views, but with presentation in a manner that makes it appear to be a holding, having the force of law.
Judge Jacobs seems to argue that the majority’s interpretation of the PLRA as forbidding, rather than tolerating, the survival of contract rights is not merely advisory. His argument is ingenious and requires careful attention.
He tacitly concedes that the court is not granting relief that depends on a finding that the PLRA forbids the survival of contract rights. Nonetheless, he argues as follows:
1. We consider and uphold the constitutionality of the statute on the assumption that it forbids the survival of contract rights.
2. We do this in the face of a prudential principle that counsels against adjudicating constitutional problems if they can be reasonably avoided.
3. Under this principle we cannot justify resolving the constitutional question in step 1 if the PLRA can plausibly be interpreted to allow for the survival of contract rights (as that interpretation would obviate the constitutional inquiry).
4. We therefore consider whether the PLRA may reasonably be construed to tolerate the survival of contract rights and conclude that it may not.
5. Ergo, Judge Jacobs concludes, our decision that contract rights do not survive the termination of the consent decrees is not merely advisory, albeit not a “core holding.”
Judge Jacobs’s explanation flows elegantly from step 1 to step 5. The principal problem is that step 1 is gratuitous.3 We have no occasion to consider the question whether the PLRA passes constitutional muster if construed to extinguish contract rights. No one has asked us to rule on whether contract rights survive the termination of the decrees. And our decision requiring the termination of the decrees, *171the issue we are required to adjudicate, would be the same regardless whether the PLRA tolerates or forbids the survival of contract rights following the termination.
Judge Jacobs offers a second reason why the discussion is not advisory, which is that “[t]he Panel opinion is vacated, not annihilated.” In other words, people can still read it, and be influenced by its ideas. If we disagree with it we should say so and explain why we have vacated it.
Once again, the majority’s desire to disavow the views asserted in the panel’s opinion may well justify the discussion, but that does not make it a holding. Whether a discussion is holding or dictum depends on its relationship to the relief the court renders, not on its relationship to the pronouncements of other judges in the prior history of the case. Until we are asked to rule on the survival of contract rights, our views of those competing interpretations of the PLRA are advisory.
Even if the majority were to insist explicitly that the passage is not a dictum, but a holding, that would not make it so. That is because a court’s power to make law derives solely from its obligation to decide the disputes before it. As Judge Friendly explained in United States v. Rubin, 609 F.2d 51, 69 (2d Cir.1979) (Friendly, J. concurring), “A judge’s power to bind is limited to the issue that is before him; he cannot transmute dictum into decision by waving a wand and uttering the word ‘hold.’ ”
I join in the adjudicatory portion of the majority’s opinion, but not in Part IIA.

. The Supreme Court recognized that its power to "say what the law is” extends solely to properly presented cases and controversies as early as 1793. Responding to a written request from Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson on behalf of President Washington seeking advice on legal questions arising from treaties between the United States and France, the Justices wrote President Washington a letter stating in part that ”[t]he lines of separation drawn by the Constitution between the three departments of the government— their being in certain respects checks upon each other — and our being judges of a court in the last resort — are considerations which afford strong arguments against the propriety 'of our extrajudicially deciding the questions alluded to." Letter from the Justices to George Washington (Aug. 8, 1793), reprinted in Hart & Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System 93 (Richard H. Fallon et al. eds., 4th ed. 1996).

. See Imprisoned Citizens Union v. Ridge, 169 F.3d 178, 190 (3d Cir.1999) (“If the Inmates have valid contractual claims that survive termination [of consent decrees under the PLRA], such claims are based solely upon ... Pennsylvania law, and are not affected by the PLRA. 18 U.S.C. § 3626(d) (“The limitations on remedies in this section shall not apply to relief entered by a State court based solely upon claims arising under State law.”). The Inmates are therefore free to pursue relief in the Pennsylvania courts. It is not our province to speak to the validity of any claims arising under Pennsylvania law, or to award relief therefor.”) (internal quotation marks, citations, and brackets omitted).

. In addition, the principle on which Judge Jacobs relies in step 2 counsels avoidance of constitutional issues only when they present serious problems. See Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, -, 118 S.Ct. 1219, 1228, 140 L.Ed.2d 350 (1998). The majority opinion finds no serious constitutional problem in upholding the statute on the assumption that it bars survival of contract rights.