Court Opinion

ID: 9430717
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:24.21394+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:25.982109
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.
Article III, §1, of the Constitution provides that “[t]he judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” It further specifies that the federal judicial power must be exercised by judges who “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and [who] shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.”
On its face, Article III, § 1, seems to prohibit the vesting of any judicial functions in either the Legislative or the Executive Branch. The Court has, however, recognized three narrow exceptions to the otherwise absolute mandate of Article III: territorial courts, see, e. g., American Ins. Co. v. Canter, 1 Pet. 511 (1828); courts-martial, see, e. g., Dynes v. Hoover, 20 How. 65 (1857); and courts that adjudicate certain disputes concerning public rights, see, e. g., Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272 (1856); Ex parte Bakelite Corp., 279 U. S. 438 (1929); Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22 (1932); Thomas v. Union Carbide Agricultural Products Co., 473 U. S. 568 (1985). See generally Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50 (1982) (opinion of Brennan, J.). Unlike the Court, I would limit the judicial authority of non-Article III federal tribunals to these few, long-established exceptions and would countenance no farther erosion of Article Ill’s mandate.
I
The Framers knew that “[t]he accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, *860whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” The Federalist No. 46, p. 334 (H. Dawson ed. 1876) (J. Madison). In order to prevent such tyranny, the Framers devised a governmental structure composed of three distinct branches — “a vigorous Legislative Branch,” “a separate and wholly independent Executive Branch,” and “a Judicial Branch equally independent.” Bowsher v. Synar, ante, at 722. The separation of powers and the checks and balances that the Framers built into our tripartite form of government were intended to operate as a “self-executing safeguard against the encroachment or aggrandizement of one branch at the expense of the other.” Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 122 (1976) (per curiam). “‘The fundamental necessity of maintaining each of the three general departments of government entirely free from the control or coercive influence, direct or indirect, of either of the others, has often been stressed and is hardly open to serious question.’” Bowsher, ante, at 725 (quoting Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602, 629 (1935)). The federal judicial power, then, must be exercised by judges who are independent of the Executive and the Legislature in order to maintain the checks and balances that are crucial to our constitutional structure.
The Framers also understood that a principal benefit of the separation of the judicial power from the legislative and executive powers would be the protection of individual litigants from decisionmakers susceptible to majoritarian pressures. Article Ill’s salary and tenure provisions promote impartial adjudication by placing the judicial power of the United States “in a body of judges insulated from majoritarian pressures and thus able to enforce [federal law] without fear of reprisal or public rebuke.” United States v. Raddatz, 447 U. S. 667, 704 (1980) (Marshall, J., dissenting). As Alexander Hamilton observed, “[t]hat inflexible and uniform adherence to the rights of the Constitution, and of individ*861uals, which we perceive to be indispensable in the Courts of justice can certainly not be expected from Judges who hold their offices by a temporary commission.” The Federalist No. 78, p. 546 (H. Dawson ed. 1876). This is so because
“[i]f the power of making [periodic appointments] was committed either to the Executive or Legislature, there would, be danger of an improper complaisance to the branch which possessed it; if to both, there would be an unwillingness to hazard the displeasure of either; if to the People, or to persons chosen by them for the special purpose, there would be too great a disposition to consult popularity, to justify a reliance that nothing would be consulted but the Constitution and the laws.” Ibid.
“Next to permanency in office,” Hamilton added, “nothing can contribute more to the independence of the Judges than a fixed provision for their support” because “a power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.” Id., at 548 (emphasis in original). See also United States v. Will, 449 U. S. 200, 217-218 (1980) (“A Judiciary free from control by the Executive and the Legislature is essential if there is a right to have claims decided by judges who are free from potential domination by other branches of government”); United States ex rel. Toth v. Quarles, 850 U. S. 11, 16 (1955) (Black, J.) (“The provisions of Article III were designed to give judges maximum freedom from the possible coercion or influence by the executive or legislative branches of the Government”).
These important functions of Article III are too central to our constitutional scheme to risk their incremental erosion. The exceptions we have recognized for territorial • courts, courts-martial, and administrative courts were each based on “certain exceptional powers bestowed upon Congress by the Constitution or by historical consensus.” Northern Pipeline, supra, at 70 (opinion of Brennan, J.). Here, however, there is no equally forceful reason to extend further these exceptions to situations that are distinguishable from *862existing precedents. Cf. Currie, Bankruptcy Judges and the Independent Judiciary, 16 Creighton L. Rev. 441, 445 (1983). The Court, however, engages in just such an extension. By sanctioning the adjudication of state-law counterclaims by a federal administrative agency, the Court far exceeds the analytic framework of our precedents.
More than a century ago, we recognized that Congress may not “withdraw from [Article III] judicial cognizance any matter which, from its nature, is the subject of a suit at the common law, or in equity, or admiralty. ” Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284 (emphasis added). More recently, in Northern Pipeline, 458U. S. 50 (1982), the view of a majority of the Court that the breach-of-contract and misrepresentation claims at issue in that case lay “at the core of the historically recognized judicial power,” id., at 70 (opinion of Brennan, J.), and were “the stuff of the traditional actions at common law tried by the courts at Westminster in 1789,” id., at 90 (opinion of Rehnquist, J.), contributed significantly to the Court’s conclusion that the bankruptcy courts could not constitutionally adjudicate Northern Pipeline’s common-law claims. In the instant litigation, the Court lightly discards both history and our precedents. The Court attempts to support the substantial alteration it works today in our Article III jurisprudence by pointing, inter alia, to legislative convenience; to the fact that Congress does not altogether eliminate federal-court jurisdiction over ancillary state-law counterclaims; and to Schor’s “consent” to CFTC adjudication of ContiCommodity’s counterclaims.* In my view, the Court’s effort fails.
*863H-i
The Court states that in reviewing Article III challenges, one of several factors we have taken into account is “the concerns that drove Congress to depart from the requirements of Article III.” Ante, at 851. The Court identifies the desire of Congress “to create an inexpensive and expeditious alternative forum through which customers could enforce the provisions of the CEA against professional brokers” as the motivating congressional concern here. Ante, at 855. The Court further states that “[i]t was only to ensure the effectiveness of this scheme that Congress authorized the CFTC to assert jurisdiction over common-law counterclaims^] . . . absent the CFTC’s exercise of that authority, the purposes of the reparations procedure would have been confounded.” Ante, at 856. Were we to hold that the CFTC’s authority to decide common-law counterclaims offends Article III, the Court declares, “it is clear that we would ‘defeat the obvious purpose of the legislation.’” Ibid. Article III, the Court concludes, does not “compe[l] this degree of prophylaxis.” Ibid.
I disagree — Article Ill’s prophylactic protections were intended to prevent just this sort of abdication to claims of legislative convenience. The Court requires that the legislative interest in convenience and efficiency be weighed against the competing interest in judicial independence. In doing so, the Court pits an interest the benefits of which are immediate, concrete, and easily understood against one, the benefits of which are almost entirely prophylactic, and thus often seem remote and not worth the cost in any single case. Thus, while this balancing creates the illusion of objectivity and ineluctability, in fact the result was foreordained, because the balance is weighted against judicial independence. See Redish, Legislative Courts, Administrative Agencies, and the Northern Pipeline Decision, 1983 Duke L. J. 197, 221-222. The danger of the Court’s balancing approach is, of course,. that as individual cases accumulate in which the *864Court finds that the short-term benefits of efficiency outweigh the long-term benefits of judicial independence, the protections of Article III will be eviscerated.
Perhaps the resolution of reparations claims such as respondents’ may be accomplished more conveniently under the Court’s decision than under my-approach, but the Framers foreswore this sort of convenience in order to preserve freedom. As we explained in INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 959 (1983):
“The choices we discern as having been made in the Constitutional Convention impose burdens on governmental processes that often seem clumsy, inefficient, even unworkable, but those hard choices were consciously made by men who had lived under a form of government that permitted arbitrary governmental acts to go unchecked. . . . With all the obvious flaws of delay [and] untidiness ... , we have not yet found a better way to preserve freedom than by making the exercise of power subject to the carefully crafted restraints spelled out in the Constitution.”
Moreover, in Bowsher v. Synar, ante, p. 714, we rejected the appellant’s argument that legislative convenience saved the constitutionality of the assignment by Congress to the Comptroller General of essentially executive functions, stating: “‘[T]he fact that a given law or procedure is efficient, convenient, and useful in facilitating functions of government, standing alone, will not save it if it is contrary to the Constitution. Convenience and efficiency are not the primary objectives — or the hallmarks — of democratic government . . . .’” Ante, at 736 (quoting Chadha, supra, at 944). We recognized that “‘[t]he hydraulic pressure inherent within each of the separate Branches to exceed the outer limits of its power, even to accomplish desirable objectives, must be resisted.’” Ante, at 727 (quoting Chadha, supra, at 951). Despite the “conflicts, confusion, and discordance” that separation of powers may at times generate, ante, at *865722, we held that it is necessary to endure the inconvenience of separated powers in order “‘to secure liberty.’” Ante, at 721 (quoting Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579, 635 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring)).
It is impossible to reconcile the radically different approaches the Court takes to separation of powers in this litigation and in Bowsher. The Framers established three coequal branches of government and intended to preserve each from encroachment by either of the others. The Constitution did not grant Congress the general authority to bypass the Judiciary whenever Congress deems it advisable, any more than it granted Congress the authority to arrogate to itself executive functions.
Ill
According to the Court, the intrusion into the province of the Federal Judiciary caused by the CFTC’s authority to adjudicate state-law counterclaims is insignificant, both because the CFTC shares in, rather than displaces, federal district court jurisdiction over these claims and because only a very narrow class of state-law issues are involved. The “sharing” justification fails under the reasoning used by the Court to support the CFTC’s authority. If the administrative reparations proceeding is so much more convenient and efficient than litigation in federal district court that abrogation of Article Ill’s commands is warranted, it seems to me that complainants would rarely, if ever, choose to go to district court in the first instance. Thus, any “sharing” of jurisdiction is more illusory than real.
More importantly, the Court, in emphasizing that this litigation will permit solely a narrow class of state-law claims to be decided by a non-Article III court, ignores the fact that it establishes a broad principle. The decision today may authorize the administrative adjudication only of state-law claims that stem from the same transaction or set of facts that allow the customer of a professional commodity broker to initiate reparations proceedings before the CFTC, but the *866reasoning of this decision strongly suggests that, given “legislative necessity” and party consent, any federal agency may decide state-law issues that are ancillary to federal issues within the agency’s jurisdiction. Thus, while in this litigation “the magnitude of any intrusion on the Judicial Branch” may conceivably be characterized as “de minimis,” ante, at 856, the potential impact of the Court’s decision on federal-court jurisdiction is substantial. The Court dismisses warnings about the dangers of its approach, asserting simply that it does not fear the slippery slope, ante, at 852, and that this litigation does not involve the creation by Congress of a “phalanx of non-Article III tribunals equipped to handle the entire business of the Article III courts.” Ante, at 855. A healthy respect for the precipice on which we stand is warranted, however, for this reason: Congress can seriously impair Article Ill’s structural and individual protections without assigning away “the entire business of the Article III courts.” Ibid, (emphasis added). It can do so by diluting the judicial power of the federal courts. And, contrary to the Court’s intimations, dilution of judicial power operates to impair the protections of Article III regardless of whether Congress acted with the “good intention” of providing a more efficient dispute resolution system or with the “bad intention” of strengthening the Legislative Branch at the expense of the Judiciary.
IV
The Court’s reliance on Schor’s “consent” to a non-Article III tribunal is also misplaced. The Court erroneously suggests that there is a clear division between the separation of powers and the impartial adjudication functions of Article III. Ante, at 848. The Court identifies Article Ill’s structural, or separation-of-powers, function as preservation of the Judiciary’s domain from encroachment by another branch. Ante, at 850. The Court identifies the impartial adjudication function as the protection afforded by Article III to individ*867ual litigants against judges who may be dominated by other branches of government. Ante, at 848.
In my view, the structural and individual interests served by Article III are inseparable. The potential exists for individual litigants to be deprived of impartial decisionmakers only where federal officials who exercise judicial power are susceptible to congressional and executive pressure. That is, individual litigants may be harmed by the assignment of judicial power to non-Article III federal tribunals only where the Legislative or Executive Branches have encroached upon judicial authority and have thus threatened the separation of powers. The Court correctly recognizes that to the extent that Article Ill’s structural concerns are implicated by a grant of judicial power to a non-Article III tribunal, “the parties cannot by consent cure the constitutional difficulty for the same reason that the parties by consent cannot confer on federal courts subject-matter jurisdiction beyond the limitations imposed by Article III, §2.” Ante, at 851. Because the individual and structural interests served by Article III are coextensive, I do not believe that a litigant may ever waive his right to an Article III tribunal where one is constitutionally required. In other words, consent is irrelevant to Article III analysis.
V
Our Constitution unambiguously enunciates a fundamental principle — that the “judicial Power of the United States” be reposed in an independent Judiciary. It is our obligation zealously to guard that independence so that our tripartite system of government remains strong and that individuals continue to be protected against decisionmakers subject to majoritarian pressures. Unfortunately, today the Court forsakes that obligation for expediency. I dissent.

The Court also rests its holding on the fact that Congress has not assigned the same sweeping judicial powers to the CFTC that it had assigned to the bankruptcy courts under the Bankruptcy Act of 1978 and that we held violated Article III in Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50 (1982). While I agree with the Court that the grant of judicial authority to the CFTC is significantly narrower in scope than the grant to the bankruptcy courts under the 1978 Act, in my view, that difference does not suffice to cure the constitutional defects raised by the grant of authority over state-law counterclaims to the CFTC.