Court Opinion

ID: 9430098
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:57.184741+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:22.987802
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The Attorney General of Massachusetts is a member of a favored class of litigants. As the highest legal officer of a sovereign State, his professional comments on the law of Massachusetts are accorded special respect.1 Partly for that reason, and partly because this Court in recent years has been inclined to lend a sympathetic ear to claims that state courts have accorded too much protection to the rights of prison inmates and criminal defendants, State Attorneys General have been disproportionately successful in persuading this Court to grant their petitions for certiorari *458and to reverse state-court judgments of minimal national significance.2
Such favored treatment should give rise to a special duty to be meticulously forthright and accurate in advising the Court about relevant matters of state law affecting the specific questions that a State Attorney General asks this Court to review. A lawyer’s greatest asset — his or her professional reputation — should not be squandered in order to achieve a favorable result in an individual case. I restate these simple truths because of my concern that the petitioner in this case and, indeed, the Court itself, may have attached greater importance to the correction of error in an isolated case than to the maintenance of standards that should govern procedures in this Court in all cases.
The Massachusetts Attorney General’s petition for certio-rari asked this Court to decide these two questions:
“I. Whether prison inmates have a substantive due process right to judicial review of prison disciplinary board findings?
“II. Whether, under the due process clause, the findings of a prison disciplinary board should be reviewed under a standard more stringent than review for action which is arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion?” Pet. for Cert. i.
Having granted certiorari and having had these two questions fully briefed and argued, the Court now correctly concludes that neither need be answered. It was obvious on the face of the Attorney General’s petition for certiorari that the second question would not have merited review in this Court. That question — whether the Due Process Clause requires that a disciplinary board’s findings of fact be reviewed under *459a more stringent standard than abuse of discretion — is not presented because the Massachusetts court did not apply a more stringent standard.3 The first question, however, may have merited our attention if there had been no state procedure for reviewing prison disciplinary board findings.
The first question in the Attorney General’s certiorari petition was supported by the following argument: “A prison inmate has no general due process right to judicial review of disciplinary board findings for sufficiency of the evidence, and the creation of such a right is not consistent with those principles enunciated by this Court in the context of prison administration.” Pet. for Cert. 14. Thus, although the right to judicial review was at the heart of the Attorney General’s request that we grant certiorari, “somewhat inexplicably,” ante, at 452, he did not mention that Massachusetts’ law, wholly apart from the Federal Constitution, provides judicial review for the correction of errors “in proceedings *460which. .. are not otherwise re viewable by motion or appeal.” Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 249, §4 (West Supp. 1984). Of course, we need not “decide in this case whether due process would require judicial review,” ante, at 453, if state law provides judicial review, and the Court today correctly acknowledges this settled rule of judicial restraint. See ante, at 450-453. The Court’s proper disposition of the primary question presented, however, does not adequately explain how this case arrived on our argument docket.
The Attorney General’s petition for certiorari did not mention the existence of state procedures allowing judicial review. In his argument brief, the Attorney General did cite the state statute in a somewhat opaque footnote. See Brief for Petitioner 6, n. 2. That footnote, however, merely confirms the presumption that he was aware of his own State’s procedure. Moreover, the Attorney General omitted any reference to the fact that less than one month before this case was argued before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, that court rejected, in the context of a challenge to prison disciplinary hearings, the Attorney General’s defense that “the only judicial review available to the plaintiffs is an action in the nature of certiorari pursuant to G. L. c. 249, §4.” Nelson v. Commissioner of Correction, 390 Mass. 379, 381-382, 387-388, n. 12, 456 N. E. 2d 1100, 1102, 1106, n. 12 (1983) (emphasis added).
“When the prison Superintendent petitioned for certiorari, he had a heavy burden of explaining why this Court should intervene in what amounts to a controversy between the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and that State’s prison officials.” Ponte v. Real, 471 U. S. 491, 502 (1985) (Stevens, J., concurring). Even the casual student of this Court is aware that “[t]his Court’s review ... is discretionary and depends on numerous factors other than the perceived correctness of the judgment we are asked to review,” Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U. S. 600, 616-617 (1974), and that we “do not grant a certiorari to review evidence and discuss *461specific facts.” United States v. Johnston, 268 U. S. 220, 227 (1925).4 It is not unreasonable to expect a State’s highest legal officer to know the State’s law and to bring to this Court’s attention the rules of state law that might affect the sound exercise of our discretion to grant certiorari, or that might demonstrate that we granted the writ improvidently.5
The Court now recognizes that the Massachusetts Attorney General “somewhat inexplicably” failed to provide the Court with critical information about Massachusetts law, but that recognition does not affect its disposition of the case. In view of the fact that petitioner has not prevailed on either question that is presented by his certiorari petition, one might have expected the judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to be affirmed. The Court has frequently admonished litigants that they may not obtain a reversal on a ground not urged in the petition for certiorari.6 Instead of following the practice dictated by our prior cases, however, the Court undertakes its own de novo review of the record and concludes that the evidence was not constitutionally insufficient.7 I continue to believe that such a task is *462not appropriate for this Court even if a diligent search will disclose error in the record. Cf. United States v. Hasting, 461 U. S. 499, 512 (1983) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). I consider it particularly unwise to volunteer an advisory opinion on the sufficiency of the evidence when, on remand, the state court remains free to reinstate its judgment if it concludes that the evidence does not satisfy the standards required by state law.8 Once again, however, the Court places a higher value on the rendition of a volunteered advisory opinion than on the virtues of judicial restraint.
Accordingly, while I join Parts I, II and III of the Court’s opinion, I respectfully dissent from Part IV and its judgment.

 See Marino v. Ragen, 332 U. S. 561, 562 (1947) (per curiam).

 See, e. g., Florida v. Rodriguez, 469 U. S. 1 (1984) (per curiam); California v. Beheler, 463 U. S. 1121 (1983) (per curiam); Illinois v. Batchelder, 463 U. S. 1112 (1983) (per curiam); California v. Ramos, 463 U. S. 992 (1983); Illinois v. Andreas, 463 U. S. 765 (1983).

 The Massachusetts court expressly declined to apply a standard different than “some evidence” in this case. Additionally, I note that virtually all Courts of Appeals that have ruled on the issue have concluded that some evidence must support a decision to revoke good-time credits. See, e. g., Adams v. Gunnell, 729 F. 2d 362, 370 (CA5 1984); Inglese v. Warden, U. S. Penitentiary, 687 F. 2d 362, 363 (CA11 1982); Willis v. Ciccone, 506 F. 2d 1011, 1018, 1019, n. 11 (CA8 1974); cf. Rusher v. Arnold, 550 F. 2d 896, 899 (CA3 1977). One Circuit did adopt a “substantial evidence” standard a few years ago. Aikens v. Lash, 514 F. 2d 55, 60-61 (CA7 1975) (“The term ‘substantial evidence’ need not be something prison officials should be overly concerned about”), vacated and remanded, 425 U. S. 947, modified, 547 F. 2d 372 (1976). However, recent decisions of that court indicate that it may have modified the standard and that the modified version is applied much like the “some evidence” standard. See Brown-Bey v. United States, 720 F. 2d 467, 469 (CA7 1983); Dawson v. Smith, 719 F. 2d 896, 900 (CA7 1983); Jackson v. Carlson, 707 F. 2d 943, 949 (CA7), cert. denied sub nom. Yeager v. Wilkinson, 464 U. S. 861 (1983). In any event, this minor dispute hardly qualifies as a one of national importance. Cf. Ponte v. Real, 471 U. S. 491, 523, n. 21 (1985) (Marshall, J., dissenting) (“Reserving the argument docket for cases of truly national import would go far toward alleviating any workload problems allegedly facing the Court”).

 Ponte v. Real, 471 U. S., at 501-502 (STEVENS, J., concurring) (“The merits of an isolated case have only an oblique relevance to the question whether a grant of certiorari is consistent with the sound administration of this Court’s discretionary docket”).

 Cf. Board of License Comm’rs of Tiverton v. Pastore, 469 U. S. 238 (1985) (per curiam). See this Court’s Rule 34.1(g) (a brief on the merits shall contain “a concise statement of the case containing all that is material to the consideration of the question presented”); Rule 35.5 (supplemental brief may be filed to point out “late authorities, newly enacted legislation, or other intervening matters”).

 J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U. S. 426, 428-429 (1964); Carpenters v. NLRB, 357 U. S. 93, 96 (1958); Irvine v. California, 347 U. S. 128, 129-130 (1954).

 Thus, the Court not only excuses the Attorney General’s error but actually rewards him by acting as “the High Magistrate,” California v. Carney, 471 U. S. 386, 396 (1985) (Stevens, J., dissenting), and by reversing “fact-bound errors of minimal significance.” Ibid.

 Cf. Massachusetts v. Upton, 466 U. S. 727 (1984), on remand, Commonwealth v. Upton, 394 Mass. 368, 370-373, 476 N. E. 2d 548, 550-551 (1985); California v. Ramos, 463 U. S. 992 (1983), on remand, People v. Ramos, 37 Cal. 3d 136, 150-159, 689 P. 2d 430, 437-444 (1984), cert. denied, 471 U. S. 1119 (1985); South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U. S. 553 (1983), on remand, State v. Neville, 346 N. W. 2d 425, 427-429 (SD 1984); Washington v. Chrisman, 455 U. S. 1 (1982), on remand, State v. Chrisman, 100 Wash. 814, 817-822, 676 P. 2d 419, 422-424 (1984) (en banc).