Court Opinion

ID: 9842090
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:12:39.386604+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:36.223198
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Gaps in the law must, of course, be filled by judicial construction. But after a statute has been construed, either by this Court or by a consistent course of decision by other federal judges and agencies, it acquires a meaning that should be as clear as if the judicial gloss had been drafted by the Congress itself. This position reflects both respect for Congress’ role, see Boys Market, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U. S. 235, 257-258 (1970) (Black, J., dissenting), and the compelling need to preserve the courts’ limited resources, see B. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 149 (1921).
During the 32 years immediately following this Court’s decision in Wilko v. Swan, 346 U. S. 427 (1953), each of the eight Circuits that addressed the issue concluded that the holding of Wilko was fully applicable to claims arising under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.1 See ante, at 248, n. 6 (opinion of Blackmun, J.). This longstanding interpretation2 creates a strong presumption, in my view, that any mis*269take that the courts may have made in interpreting the statute is best remedied by the Legislative, not the Judicial, Branch. The history set forth in Part I of Justice Blackmun’s opinion adds special force to that presumption in this case.
For this reason, I respectfully dissent from the portion of the Court’s judgment that holds Wilko inapplicable to the 1934 Act. Like Justice Blackmun, however, I join Parts I, II, and IV of the Court’s opinion.

 It was only after Justice White’s concurrence in Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U. S. 213, 224 (1985), indicating his “substantial doubt” about Wilko’s applicability to the 1934 Act, that two Circuits held it to be inapplicable. See ante, at 249, n. 8 (opinion of Blackmun, J.).

 Because I have never been convinced that the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws were intended to apply to private transactions negotiated between fully informed parties of relatively equal bargaining strength, see Landreth Timber Co. v. Landreth, 471 U. S. 681, 697 (1985) (Stevens, J., dissenting), I was not at all surprised by the Court’s decision in Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U. S. 506 (1974), refusing to apply the Wilko rule to such a case. See Alberto-Culver Co. v. Scherk, 484 F. 2d *269611, 615-620 (CA7 1973) (Stevens, J., dissenting). As Justice Black-mun has demonstrated, that refusal was not predicated on any perceived difference between the 1933 Act and the 1934 Act, and it is thus fair to state that the decision the Court announces today changes a settled construction of the relevant statute.