Court Opinion

ID: 9430988
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:04.02605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:34.428107
License: Public Domain

Justice Scalia,
dissenting.
When respondents were deported from the United States in October 1984, they were specifically warned that 8 U. S. C. § 1326 made it a felony for them to reenter the United States illegally. Two months later, they were apprehended in the United States and charged with violating § 1326. Respondents assert that even if their reentry was illegal, they cannot lawfully be punished for violating § 1326, because the proceedings in which they were originally deported violated the Due Process Clause.1 I agree with the *847Court that the lawfulness of respondents’ original deportation proceedings is irrelevant to the question whether respondents violated § 1326. I dissent, however, because I do not share the Court’s view that the lawfulness of those proceedings is relevant to the question whether respondents may constitutionally be punished if they violated § 1326.
I think it clear that Congress may constitutionally make it a felony for deportees — irrespective of the legality of their deportations — to reenter the United States illegally. See Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55 (1980) (Congress may constitutionally make it a felony for convicted felons — irrespective of the legality of their convictions — to deal in or possess firearms).2 The sole ground upon which the Court attempts to distinguish Lewis is that in this case respondents were completely foreclosed from obtaining “effective judicial review” of their deportations, while in Lewis the felons could *848have obtained collateral review of their convictions before obtaining firearms. Ante, at 837-840, 841. It is true that the Court in Lewis relied on the availability of collateral review. 445 U. S., at 64, 67. But, contrary to the Court’s implication, ante, at 837, neither Lewis nor any of the other cases relied upon by the Court squarely holds that the Due Process Clause invariably forbids reliance upon the outcome of unreviewable administrative determinations in subsequent criminal proceedings. See McKart v. United States, 395 U. S. 185 (1969) (interpreting a statute to permit collateral attack of prior administrative orders); Estep v. United States, 327 U. S. 114 (1946) (same); Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S. 414 (1944) (interpreting a statute to forbid collateral attack of earlier administrative orders).
The Court’s apparent adoption of . that conclusion today seems to me wrong. To illustrate that point by one out of many possible examples, imagine that a State establishes an administrative agency that (after investigation and full judicial-type administrative hearings) periodically publishes a list of unethical businesses. Further imagine that the State, having discovered that a number of previously listed businesses are bribing the agency’s investigators to avoid future listing, passes a law making it a felony for a business that has been listed to bribe agency investigators. It cannot be that the Due Process Clause forbids the State to punish violations of that law unless it either makes the agency’s listing decisions judicially reviewable or permits those charged with violating the law to defend themselves on the ground that the original listing decisions were in some way unlawful.
Even if I believed the availability of “effective judicial review” to be relevant, I would still dissent, because review was available here. It is true, as the Court notes, that the District Court found that respondents’ waivers of any appeal from the Immigration Judge’s deportation order were “not the result of considered judgments,” App. to Pet. for Cert. *84923a, because they were affected by the Immigration Judge’s failure adequately to explain to respondents that they could apply for suspension of deportation, ante, at 839. There is a world of difference, however, between denial of a right to appeal and failure to assure that parties understand the available grounds for appeal and forgo them in a “considered” fashion. Since to my knowledge administrative agencies rarely undertake such assurance, the Court’s unbounded and unexplained conception of “effective” denial of a right of appeal, see ante, at 839, n. 17, apparently leads to the peculiar conclusion that administrative proceedings are almost always without judicial review. I reject this conclusion.
Moreover, in concluding that the Immigration Judge’s acceptance of respondents’ unconsidered waivers effectively denied respondents their rights to appeal, the Court completely ignores the possibility that, notwithstanding their waivers and the fact that they had been deported, respondents could still have appealed their deportations on the ground that the deportations were unlawful and the waivers were unlawfully secured, cf., e. g., Mendez v. INS, 563 F. 2d 956, 959 (CA9 1977), or could have brought other collateral challenges to their deportations. I express no view on the question whether such suits would have been permissible under the applicable statutes, see, e. g., 8 U. S. C. § 1101(g), but merely note that a negative answer to that question is a necessary, and entirely unexplained, component of the Court’s holding.3
*850For these reasons, I think that if respondents’ reentry into the United States was unlawful, respondents may constitutionally be punished for violating § 1326. I would reverse the contrary judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 The District Court and the Court of Appeals both held that the proceedings in question violated the Due Process Clause. I agree with the Court that, because the Government did not ask us to review those holdings, see Pet. for Cert. 7, n. 6; Brief for United States 5-6, n. 5; Tr. of Oral Arg. 6-7, it is not appropriate to do so. See this Court’s Rule 21.1(a) (“Only the questions set forth in the petition or fairly included therein will be considered by the Court”). See also, e. g., INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U. S. 421, 448-449, n. 32 (1987). In arguing to the contrary, The Chief Justice first observes that the lawfulness of respondents’ deportation proceedings was litigated in the Court of Appeals, and that the Government has not conceded the point. Ante, this page, n. While these observations dispose of other possible objections to consideration of the unchallenged holdings, they in no way displace the application of Rule 21.1(a). The Chief Justice also suggests that the dissent is free to consider the *847due process holdings because the Court itself does. Ibid. But I understand the Court to accept rather than review the holdings. See ante, at 840. Finally, The Chief Justice asserts that the question of the correctness of the holdings is “subsumed in the precise question presented for this Court’s review.” Ante, at 846, n. I disagree. As formulated by the Government, the question presented is “Whether a defendant prosecuted under 8 U. S. C. § 1326 for reentering the United States after having been deported may collaterally attack the validity of his deportation proceeding?” Pet. for Cert. I. I fail to see how there is subsumed within this the question whether a collateral attack in the present case would be success-fill. But for these points, I would agree with The Chief Justice that no due process violation occurred.

 Lewis involved a statute that relied upon the fact of a prior criminal conviction, rather than, as in this ease, the fact of a prior civil deportation. As the Court notes, ante, at 838, n. 15, it has been suggested that the Constitution may in some circumstances forbid use of the outcomes of administrative proceedings — even those lawfully conducted and subject to judicial review — in subsequent criminal proceedings. Whether or not that is so, I do not believe this case presents such circumstances. In any event, respondents have not claimed that it does, instead arguing only that they must be permitted to show that their deportation proceedings were not lawfully conducted. The validity of that argument can have nothing to do with whether the proceedings were administrative or criminal.

 Nor could it be argued that, although avenues of judicial review were theoretically available, respondents — not having been informed of the grounds upon which they should seek relief — could not reasonably have been expected to pursue them. That argument plainly is foreclosed by Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55 (1980), in which the Court rejected the analogous argument, advanced by the dissent, that it was unreasonable to rely on the availability of collateral relief where the defect in the original proceeding was that the felon lacked the assistance of counsel. See id., at 73 (Brennan, J., dissenting).