Court Opinion

ID: 9428884
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:03.589284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:15.832821
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Justice O’Connor joins,
concurring in the judgment.
Were I to agree with the plurality that the question presented by these cases is “whether the assignment by Congress to bankruptcy judges of the jurisdiction granted in 28 U. S. C. §1471 (1976 ed., Supp IV) by § 241(a) of the Bankruptcy Act of 1978 violates Art. Ill of the Constitution,” ante, at 52, I would with considerable reluctance embark on the duty of deciding this broad question. But appellee Marathon Pipe Line Co. has not been subjected to the full range of authority granted bankruptcy courts by § 1471. It was named as a defendant in a suit brought by appellant Northern Pipeline Construction Co. in a United States Bankruptcy Court. The suit sought damages for, inter alia, breaches of contract and warranty. Marathon moved to dismiss the action on the grounds that the Bankruptcy Act of 1978, which authorized the suit, violated Art. Ill of the Constitution insofar as it established bankruptcy judges whose tenure and salary protection do not conform to the requirements of Art. III.
With the cases in this posture, Marathon has simply been named defendant in a lawsuit about a contract, a lawsuit initiated by appellant Northern after having previously filed a petition for reorganization under the Bankruptcy Act. Marathon may object to proceeding further with this lawsuit on the grounds that if it is to be resolved by an agency of the United States, it may be resolved only by an agency which exercises “[t]he judicial power of the United States” described by Art. Ill of the Constitution. But resolution of *90any objections it may make on this ground to the exercise of a different authority conferred on bankruptcy courts by the 1978 Act, see ante, at 54-55, should await the exercise of such authority.
“This Court, as is the case with all federal courts, ‘has no jurisdiction to pronounce any statute, either of a State or of the United States, void, because irreconcilable with the Constitution, except as it is called upon to adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies. In the exercise of that jurisdiction, it is bound by two rules, to which it has rigidly adhered, one, never to anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it; the other never to formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied.’ Liverpool, New York & Philadelphia S.S. Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration, 113 U. S, 33, 39.” United States v. Raines, 362 U. S. 17, 21 (1960).
Particularly in an area of constitutional law such as that of “Art. Ill Courts,” with its frequently arcane distinctions and confusing precedents, rigorous adherence to the principle that this Court should decide no more of a constitutional question than is absolutely necessary accords with both our decided cases and with sound judicial policy.
From the record before us, the lawsuit in which Marathon was named defendant seeks damages for breach of contract, misrepresentation, and other counts which are the stuff of the traditional actions at common law tried by the courts at Westminster in 1789. There is apparently no federal rule of decision provided for any of the issues in the lawsuit; the claims of Northern arise entirely under state law. No method of adjudication is hinted, other than the traditional common-law mode of judge and jury. The lawsuit is before the Bankruptcy Court only because the plaintiff has previously filed a petition for reorganization in that court.
*91The cases dealing with the authority of Congress to create courts other than by use of its power under Art. Ill do not admit of easy synthesis. In the interval of nearly 150 years between American Insurance Co. v. Canter, 1 Pet. 511 (1828), and Patmore v. United States, 411 U. S. 389 (1973), the Court addressed the question infrequently. I need not decide whether these cases in fact support a general proposition and three tidy exceptions, as the plurality believes, or whether instead they are but landmarks on a judicial “darkling plain” where ignorant armies have clashed by night, as Justice White apparently believes them to be. None of the cases has gone so far as to sanction the type of adjudication to which Marathon will be subjected against its will under the provisions of the 1978 Act. To whatever extent different powers granted under that Act might be sustained under the “public rights” doctrine of Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272 (1856), and succeeding cases, I am satisfied that the adjudication of Northern’s lawsuit cannot be so sustained.
I am likewise of the opinion that the extent of review by Art. Ill courts provided on appeal from a decision of the bankruptcy court in a case such as Northern’s does not save the grant of authority to the latter under the rule espoused in Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22 (1932). All matters of fact and law in whatever domains of the law to which the parties’ dispute may lead are to be resolved by the bankruptcy court in the first instance, with only traditional appellate review by Art. Ill courts apparently contemplated. Acting in this manner the bankruptcy court is not an “adjunct” of either the district court or the court of appeals.
I would, therefore, hold so much of the Bankruptcy Act of 1978 as enables a Bankruptcy Court to entertain and decide Northern’s lawsuit over Marathon’s objection to be violative of Art. Ill of the United States Constitution. Because I agree with the plurality that this grant of authority is not readily severable from the remaining grant of authority to *92bankruptcy courts under § 1471, see ante, at 87-88, n. 40, I concur in the judgment. I also agree with the discussion in Part V of the plurality opinion respecting retroactivity and the staying of the judgment of this Court.