Court Opinion

ID: 9489618
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:19:46.292389+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:37.307104
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
with whom ROVNER, Circuit Judge, joins, dissenting.*
This case presents several issues involving the new amendments to section 2254 of the Judicial Code. Among those issues, the one of most enduring importance is whether the new section 2254(d) is compatible with the judicial role of the United States courts required by the Third Article of the Constitution. The problematic subsection, identified as such by the President in his approval of the legislation1 and by legislators who favored and opposed the measure, forbids the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus unless the decision of the state court “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.”
1.
Several rules of statutory construction are pertinent to our analysis. First, we must remember that the statute must be interpreted as a whole. The amended language therefore must be considered in relation to the unamended language. We must give every word of the statute a meaning. We cannot assume that Congress intended certain words or phrases to have no force and effect. See Mackey v. Lanier Collection Agency & Serv., 486 U.S. 825, 837, 108 S.Ct. 2182, 2189, 100 L.Ed.2d 836 (1988). We also must attempt to interpret the statute in a manner that renders it constitutional. See Johnson v. Robison, 415 U.S. 361, 366-67, 94 S.Ct. 1160, 1165-66, 39 L.Ed.2d 389 (1974). In doing so, however, we must not give the statute a strained meaning that clearly was not the intent of Congress. See, e.g., Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, - U.S. -, - n. 9, 116 S.Ct. 1114, 1124 n. 9, 134 L.Ed.2d 252 (1996).
We turn briefly to another preliminary consideration. The text of the amended statute sets forth what can be characterized semantically as two separate requirements: (1) that the underlying state decision be contrary to or involve an unreasonable application of federal constitutional law; and (2) that the applicable federal constitutional law have been determined by the Supreme Court of the United States. Ease of presentation and discussion certainly suggests such a divi*886sion and the majority adopts it as its analysis. In the paragraphs that follow, the same pattern will be followed as a preliminary matter. However, we must also remember that the structure of our analysis can, and indeed often does, predetermine the result. This two-pronged approach, helpftd as it is in the presentation of the material, must be critically evaluated because, although it has the virtue of clarity, it may well not reveal the true operation and effect of the statute and therefore present a skewed model for final evaluation of the amendment’s constitutionality.
Finally, it is important to note that, both before and after the amendment in question, the fundamental task of the judiciary under this statute remains unchanged: Congress has given the federal courts, including this court, the task of determining whether a state prisoner is “in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Under the previous version of the statute, the federal court determined on its own the applicable federal constitutional standard. The new statute operates in a decidedly different manner. Having given the federal courts the jurisdiction to determine whether a person is being held in custody in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, Congress now has also mandated how the courts will determine the applicable constitutional standard.
2.
Under the new amendment, in ascertaining whether there has been a violation of the Constitution, the courts are restricted to the case law of the Supreme Court of the United States; they are not permitted to rely as well upon their own precedent. In short, Congress, although continuing to vest the federal courts with the authority to decide whether a person is being held in state custody in violation of the Constitution, has now specified that the judiciary is required to disregard the work product of one of its components, a source of law upon which the courts otherwise would rely in the adjudication of the case.
It is a “basic principle that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution, and that principle has ever since been respected ... as a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system.” Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 18, 78 S.Ct. 1401, 1410, 3 L.Ed.2d 5 (1958). As Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803), made clear in the earliest days of the Republic, this obligation flows from the constitutionally imposed obligation of the courts to decide cases within their jurisdiction and to determine and apply the law necessary to adjudicate those cases.
In determining whether Congress has intruded impermissibly into the federal judicial function, we must, as the majority acknowledges, first determine, with specificity, the nature of the judicial power. There can be no disagreement with the basic proposition that the Constitution, in its very text, makes clear that, once created, the inferior federal courts share the judicial power with the “one Supreme Court” mentioned explicitly in the constitutional text. Nor can there be any disagreement that such power must be exercised in light of the “revisionary” jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Beyond this point, however, it is difficult to determine the precise contours of the majority’s concept of the federal judicial power. Despite its emphasis on the distinctive responsibility of an inferior court, it describes the role of that inferior court as simply placing a “gloss” on the work of the Supreme Court. If we are to understand the constitutional function that we are duty bound to protect, a far more carefully drawn description of its contours is indicated. It helps little to define it in the negative; it is obviously not the “agency relationship” that exists between the Chief Executive and the executive departments of the government.
The relationship and interreaction of the various levels of the judiciary in molding constitutional doctrine is the product of a carefully crafted balance of power between the judiciary and the legislative branch. That balance of power is constitutionally based. Through its control of the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the entire jurisdiction of the lower courts, *887Congress certainly can influence the development of the constitutional doctrine. However, just as there are limits on the constitutional authority of the judicial branch, so too there are limits on the power of Congress to dictate the process of decision-making within the judicial department with respect to the meaning of the Constitution. Although Congress has the authority to create and abolish the lower federal courts and to regulate their jurisdiction, it has no power to dictate how the content of the governing law will be determined within the judicial department.- In the present jurisdictional structure ordained by Congress, it is the responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States to regulate, principally through the doctrines of stare decisis and precedent, the jurisprudence of the lower federal courts. Control of the law making function of the lower federal courts, within the hierarchical nature of the judiciary, is therefore a matter within the province of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of the United States, with the authority to bring a court of appeals to doctrinal heal, determines the degree to which the lower courts ought to be permitted to engage in constitutional doctrinal development. !
When a ease comes before an inferior federal court in the normal course of its exercise of jurisdiction, it is the duty of that court to determine the constitutional question before it. The inferior courts have a clear responsibility to refine the basic constitutional principles enunciated by the Supreme Court. The task is accomplished through the process of reasoned elaboration disciplined by the doctrines of stare decisis and precedent. The duty “to say what the law is” is a unitary one within the unitary judicial department created by the Constitution. See Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, - U.S. -, -, 115 S.Ct. 1447, 1457, 131 L.Ed.2d 328 (1995) (“not a batch of unconnected courts, but a judicial department composed of ‘inferior Courts’ and ‘one Supreme Court’ ”) (emphasis in original). In performing that function, an inferior federal court is not free to determine the content of the Constitution without reference to the existing jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States. It must decide the case, but it must decide it as it believes, after study of and reflection upon existing case law, the Supreme Court of the United States would decide it under the Constitution. See Levine v. Heffernan, 864 F.2d 457, 459 (7th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 873, 110 S.Ct. 204, 107 L.Ed.2d 157 (1989). The Supreme Court then determines, in due course, whether the doctrinal development will be short-lived or remain a long-term part of the fabric of the constitutional jurisprudence of the judicial department of government. One justice described the interrelationship of the work of the inferior and Supreme Court by explaining the Supreme Court’s scrutiny of the work of the lower courts in these terms: “Across the screen each Term come the worries and concerns of the American people— high and low — presented in concrete, tangible form.” Tidewater Oil Co. v. United States, 409 U.S. 151, 175, 93 S.Ct. 408, 422, 34 L.Ed.2d 375 (1972) (Douglas, J., dissenting). The longevity of our constitutional jurisprudence is a matter that Congress can control only through the initiation of the amendatory process or through the alteration of the jurisdictional scheme. Congress otherwise has no more right than we to determine those aspects of our jurisprudence that the Supreme Court will allow to endure.
In section 2254, Congress has given the district court the task of determining whether a person is being held in violation of the Constitution. To require the federal judiciary to hold that there is no constitutional violation simply because there is no case of the Supreme Court of the United States directly on point, is to deny it the right to refer to the corpus of jurisprudence to which it turns when it must “say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803); see also Wright v. West, 505 U.S. 277, 305, 112 S.Ct. 2482, 2497, 120 L.Ed.2d 225 (1992) (“We have always held that federal courts, even on habeas, have an independent obligation to say what the law is.”) (O’Connor, J., concurring). The amended statute requires that we decide whether a person is in custody in violation of the Constitution without consulting the body *888of law that determines what the judicial department says the Constitution requires.2
3.
Limiting the judicial function of determining the meaning of the Constitution to a scrutiny of the decisions of the Supreme Court is, in itself, a sufficient constitutional infirmity to vitiate the amended statute. An examination of the “second requirement,” independent of the first, raises, however, substantial additional concerns about the amendment’s effect on the constitutional integrity of the Third Branch.
The amended statute requires that, although the district court has the obligation under the statute to issue the writ when the person is held in violation of the federal Constitution, the court must accept as definitive an interpretation of the federal Constitution by the state court, if that interpretation is a reasonable view of the clear precedent of the Supreme Court. Assuming arguendo that a reference only to the clear precedent of the Supreme Court is constitutionally acceptable, even the decisions of the Supreme Court do not form the substantive rule of decision in granting or denying the writ unless the state court’s decision is deemed unreasonable. Even if the Supreme Court’s rendition of the Constitution is “clearly established,” it becomes the rule of decision only if the state court’s interpretation of the federal Constitution is deemed to be very different from that of the Supreme Court of the United States. Otherwise, the state’s view of the Constitution, not the Supreme Court’s view, is operative.
Cast in its best light, this argument, at bottom, characterizes the restriction eon-
tained in the amendment as one of remedy: Congress simply has determined that the writ is to be available to state prisoners only when the state court’s departure from the federal norm had been “unreasonable.” Ha-beas relief is to be limited to those instances in which the degree of departure from the federal standard is so great as to have worked a gross deprivation of federal protection. This argument can be best evaluated by examining the support that the majority offers for this characterization. In its attempt to justify this approach, the majority points to other instances in which, despite the existence of a constitutional violation, plenary relief may not be available to an aggrieved individual. At first glance, these instances present seductive analogues to the present situation. Upon closer scrutiny, however, it is clear that in none of these instances is the federal court deprived of its essential responsibility and prerogative to define the meaning of the federal Constitution and to apply it to the case before it. Therefore these superficial comparisons provide no support for the statute under review in the present case.
There are several instances in which federal courts, although both declaring and applying the Constitution of the United States, place significant limitations on the available remedy. For example, in adjudicating a civil rights matter under section 1983, a federal court determines the applicable federal constitutional rule and applies it to the ease before it. Its view, not the view of any other sovereign, determines the applicable constitutional standard. Nevertheless, if a violation of a substantive constitutional standard is identified, the available remedy will vary depending on the circumstances.3 So too, in *889our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the legality of the search always remains a matter of federal constitutional law, although the remedy of the exclusionary rule is inapplicable when the law enforcement officer reasonably relied upon a judicially issued search warrant. See United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 925, 104 S.Ct. 3405, 3422, 82 L.Ed.2d 677 (1984).
In the area of habeas corpus, the same pattern is evident. Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976), simply holds that violations of the Fourth Amendment are not cognizable on habeas review because the violation does not affect the truth-finding process that is the principal focus of habeas relief. There is no deprivation of either the law declaring function or the adjudicatory function of the federal courts. Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), likewise leaves intact the essential functions of the adjudicatory process. The ease is adjudicated by the federal court on the basis of federal law. The rules of retroactive application of new developments are adjusted to take into account the nature of habeas relief.4 It is not accurate, therefore, to term this amendment a mere extension of the principle of Teague. There is a qualitative difference — a constitutional difference — between fixing the time frame at which federal law will be applied and requiring that the federal court defer to any application of constitutional principle that cannot be characterized as unreasonable. Under the latter approach, mandated by the amended statute, the federal court must be content with a careful application of the Constitution, even if it is wrong. In essence, the federal court is free to have its own opinion of what federal law requires, but it must grant or deny the writ on the basis of another non-federal tribunal’s view. Federal courts, however, must not merely expound on the eases before them; they must decide them. Plant, - U.S. at -, 115 S.Ct. at 1453. The judicial power is the authority, and the obligation, to adjudicate the case. Adjudication involves more than just the opportunity to declare the content and meaning of the law; it also involves the authority to apply that law as well.
4.
The magnitude of the deprivation worked on the judicial function can best be appreciated, however, by assessing the impact of the two phrases of the amendment together. Under the new scheme, the only permissible reference to federal constitutional law is to clearly established Supreme Court precedent. That precedent becomes the rule of decision with respect to the issuance of the writ only if the state court reaches an unreasonable view. When we pause to reflect on the role of the Supreme Court of the United States in constitutional adjudication and on the majority’s view as to how reasonableness is to be measured, it becomes clear that any suggestion that a federal rule of decision will be applied to adjudications under section 2254 is illusory.
First, it must be remembered that it has never been the role of the Supreme Court of the United States to micro-manage the development of federal constitutional jurisprudence. From the days of the Great Chief Justice in M’Culloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 407, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1818) — “[W]e must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding” — to Congress’ ratification of that role in the latest reassessment of the certiorari statute, see 28 U.S.C. § 1254 (1994), the Supreme Court’s function has been to set, at a significantly broad level of generality, the guiding principles of our constitutional jurisprudence. Further application of those principles has been the work of the lower federal courts under the scrutiny of the Supreme Court.
In state criminal proceedings, these general principles must be applied, in the first instance, by the state courts. See U.S. Const. Art. VI. On habeas review, the ma*890jority holds that it is not simply a matter of the lower federal court’s giving respectful heed to the interpretation of the federal constitution rendered by the state court. Rather, the lower federal court must accept as the federal rule of decision the state court’s view as preferable to its own. Moreover, given the broad level of generality at which the Supreme Court usually articulates the general principles of constitutional criminal procedure, the difference between the views of the federal and state court may indeed be substantial. Nevertheless, the majority tells us that these issues are “[questions of degree” and that a reasonable decision of the state court must be honored. “Questions of degree” are subjects “painted in shades of grey, rather than in contrasting colors....” This statement stands in stark contrast to the Supreme Court’s own description of “contrasting colors” in Estin v. Estin, 334 U.S. 541, 545, 68 S.Ct. 1213, 1216, 92 L.Ed. 1561 (1948): “there are few areas of the law in black and white. The greys are dominant and even between them the shades are innumerable. For the eternal problem of the law is one of making accommodation between conflicting interests.” The majority requires deference on all questions of degree. Yet, as the Supreme Court itself reminded us in Estin, discerning among the shades of grey is the essence of the adjudicatory function. See Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 112, 106 S.Ct. 445, 450-51, 88 L.Ed.2d 405 (1985) (“But, as we now reaffirm, the ultimate question whether, under the totality of the circumstances, the challenged confession was obtained in a manner compatible with the requirements of the Constitution is a matter for independent federal determination.”). By suggesting that the amendment deprives the federal district court of responsibility for all questions of degree, the majority points graphically to why the amendment does not leave intact the integrity of the Third Branch: it deprives the federal court not only of its prerogative to determine the content of federal law, but also of its right and duty to apply that law to the case before it.
As the Supreme Court has reaffirmed “time and again,” the Constitution assigns to each of the three coordinate branches their own responsibilities and vests in each their own powers. Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 693, 108 S.Ct. 2597, 2620, 101 L.Ed.2d 569 (1988). And although the Supreme Court has rejected the formalist view that there is to be no “control or coercive influence,” 5 exerted by one branch over another, if one branch, through its actions, “unduly interfered” with the role of another, such actions are void. Morrison, 487 U.S. at 693, 108 S.Ct. at 2620. In making this determination of “whether an Act [of Congress] disrupts the proper balance between the coordinate branches,” we are to focus “on the extent to which it prevents ... [another] Branch from accomplishing its constitutionally assigned functions.” Nixon, 433 U.S. at 443, 97 S.Ct. at 2790. The amended statute significantly “interfered” with the judicial role and to a great extent prevents the judicial department from accomplishing its “constitutionally assigned functions.” Simply put, the statute, as amended, deprives a federal court of the right to adjudicate the ease. And a court that does not adjudicate advises: a role decidedly different than the one the Constitution envisions for courts and judges of the Third Article.

 Judge Ripple also joins Part II of Judge Wood’s dissenting opinion.

. Statement of the President of the United States Upon Signing the Antiterrorism Bill, April 29, 1996, 1996 WL 203049 (White House).

. The majority appears to sense the incongruity of its position when it seemingly acknowledges that such an intrusion into the federal judiciary’s adjudicative function would not be permissible in the regular case or controversy but is acceptable in the case of habeas corpus. For the majority, a habeas corpus proceeding is somehow less of a constitutional case or controversy properly within the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Although this distinction is apparently crucial to its holding, the majority never discloses how or why the habeas jurisdiction of the federal courts somehow is different than other areas of the courts’ jurisdiction. Although it is very clear that the Congress, having once enacted a cause of action and vested a tribunal with the authority to adjudicate cases arising under it, can no longer dictate the rule of decision for the resolution of cases under it, we are told — as a matter of ipse dixit — that the situation is different with habeas.

. For instance, although a state official’s conduct may be determined to have violated a prevailing constitutional standard, the official may be held to enjoy absolute immunity, see Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 98 S.Ct. 1099, 55 L.Ed.2d 331 (1978) (holding that a judge enjoys absolute immunity for judicial acts within his jurisdic*889tion), or qualified immunity, see Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 340, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 1095-96, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986) (stating that qualified immunity for executive officials — state or federal — is the norm), from a damages remedy, although not from a prospective equitable remedy.

. Teague, 489 U.S. at 309, 109 S.Ct. at 1074 (noting that in the habeas review context, "[alp-plication of constitutional rules not in existence at the time a conviction became final seriously undermines the principle of finality which is essential to the operation of our criminal justice system").

. Nixon v. Administrator of Gen. Servs., 433 U.S. 425, 441-42, 97 S.Ct. 2777, 2789, 53 L.Ed.2d 867 (1977) (citing Humphrey’s Ex’r v. United States, 295 U.S. 602, 629, 55 S.Ct. 869, 874, 79 L.Ed. 1611 (1935)).