Article III, Section 1 — Inherent Powers of Federal Courts

ArtIII.S1.4.1 Overview of Inherent Powers of Federal Courts

Since the early years of the Republic, the Supreme Court has held that the federal courts possess certain inherent powers that are necessary for the courts to conduct their business and serve their constitutional function. In the 1812 case United States v. Hudson, the Court described inherent judicial powers as “certain implied powers [that] must necessarily result to our Courts of justice from the nature of their institution . . . which cannot be dispensed with in a Court, because they are necessary to the exercise of all others.”¹ These powers are not expressly enumerated in the Constitution, nor are they “immediately derived from statute.”² In 1821, in Anderson v. Dunn, the Court explained, “Courts of justice are universally acknowledged to be vested, by their very creation, with power to impose silence, respect, and decorum, in their presence, and submission to their lawful mandates.”³

Multiple Supreme Court cases have recognized inherent powers of the federal courts,⁴ including the power to manage court proceedings,⁵ to issue sanctions or hold parties in contempt for failure to comply with court orders,⁶ and to issue and vacate judgments.⁷ The following essays discuss each of those inherent powers in more detail.

ArtIII.S1.4.2 Inherent Powers Over Judicial Procedure

The Constitution divides the authority to set court procedures between the legislative and Judicial Branches. Congress enjoys substantial authority to make procedural rules for the courts. That authority is not expressly granted in the Constitution. Instead, the Supreme Court has explained that the power arises from Congress’s authority to structure the federal court system, supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause.¹ In the 1825 case Wayman v. Southard, the Court held it to be “completely self-evident” that Congress has the authority to establish procedural rules for the federal courts.² The Court has approved procedural statutes that left some discretion to the federal courts, but has held that the courts do not have the inherent authority to expand their jurisdiction or to issue or execute judgments beyond what Congress has authorized.³

In 1934, recognizing the limited competence of the legislature to regulate court procedure and acknowledging the inherent power of courts to regulate the conduct of their business, Congress enacted the Rules Enabling Act.⁴ The Act authorizes the Supreme Court to “prescribe general rules of practice and procedure and rules of evidence” for cases in the federal courts.⁵ Such rules may not “abridge, enlarge or modify any substantive right.”⁶ Procedural rules also may not alter the jurisdiction or venue of federal courts.⁷ Subject to those limitations, the Court has rejected constitutional challenges to rules promulgated under the Rules Enabling Act.⁸

In addition to the legislative power to regulate court procedures, some of which Congress has delegated to the Judicial Branch, the courts themselves possess inherent equitable powers over their procedures. This inherent power serves to prevent abuse, oppression, and injustice, and to protect the courts’ jurisdiction and officers.⁹ The Supreme Court has explained that such power is essential to and inherent in the organization of courts of justice.¹⁰

While the Court has not precisely delineated the outer boundaries of the federal courts’ inherent powers to manage their own internal affairs, the Court has recognized two limits on the exercise of such authority.¹¹ First, a court, in exercising its inherent powers over its own processes, must act reasonably in response to a specific problem or issue confronting the court’s fair administration of justice.¹² Second, any exercise of an inherent power cannot conflict with any express grant of or limitation on the district court’s power as contained in a statute or rule, such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.¹³ Thus, as with rules promulgated under the Rules Enabling Act, no court-made rule can enlarge or restrict jurisdiction or abrogate or modify the substantive law. This limit applies equally to courts of law, equity, and admiralty, to rules prescribed by the Supreme Court for the guidance of lower courts, and to rules that lower courts make for their own guidance.¹⁴

Applying the foregoing standards, the Supreme Court has recognized that a federal district court, as an exercise of its inherent powers, can, in limited circumstances, rescind an order to discharge a jury and recall that jury in a civil case.¹⁵ The Court has also acknowledged that federal courts possess the inherent power to control other aspects of regulating internal court proceedings, hearing a motion in limine;¹⁶ dismissing a case for the convenience of the parties or witnesses because of the availability of an alternative forum;¹⁷ and staying proceedings pending the resolution of parallel actions in other courts.¹⁸ The federal courts also possess inherent power to amend their records, correct the errors of the clerk or other court officers, and rectify defects or omissions in their records.¹⁹ The exercise of an inherent power can, at times, allow for departures from even long-established, judicially crafted common law rules; however, courts are not generally free to discover new inherent powers that are contrary to civil practice as recognized in the common law.²⁰

Incident to the judicial power, federal courts possess inherent authority to supervise the conduct of their officers, parties, witnesses, counsel, and jurors by imposing rules to protect the rights of litigants and the orderly administration of justice.²¹ Such supervision may be accomplished through a number of different means, including promulgation of general procedural rules as discussed in this essay, oversight of admission to the bar, imposition of contempt or sanctions for parties or attorney who disobey court orders or engage in misconduct, or case-by-case decisions to exclude individuals from the courtroom.²²

ArtIII.S1.4.3 Inherent Powers Over Contempt and Sanctions

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that federal courts possess inherent authority to punish contempt—i.e., disobedience of a court order or obstruction of justice—and to impose other sanctions on parties or attorneys who engage in misconduct.

The Court’s contempt decisions have often distinguished between criminal and civil contempt.¹ Whether a contempt is civil or criminal can be of great importance. For instance, criminal contempt implicates procedural rights attendant to prosecutions, while civil contempt does not.² In Ex parte Grossman, while holding that the President may pardon a criminal contempt, Chief Justice William Howard Taft noted in dicta that the pardon power did not extend to civil contempt.³ In Turner v. Rogers, the Court held that the Due Process Clause does not grant an indigent defendant a right to state-appointed counsel at a civil contempt proceeding.⁴ Notwithstanding the importance of distinguishing between the two types of contempt, there have been instances where defendants have been charged with both civil and criminal contempt for the same act.⁵

The history of the contempt powers of the American Judiciary is marked by two trends: a shrinking of the courts’ power to punish a person summarily and a multiplying of the due process requirements that must be met when finding an individual to be in contempt.⁶ The power of the courts of the United States to punish contempts of their authority had its origin in the law and practice of England where disobedience of court orders was regarded as contempt of the King himself and attachment was a prerogative process derived from presumed contempt of the sovereign.⁷ By the latter part of the eighteenth century, summary power to punish was extended to all contempts whether committed in or out of court.⁸ In the United States, the Judiciary Act of 1789 broadly conferred power on all courts of the United States “to punish by fine or imprisonment, at the discretion of said courts, all contempts of authority in any cause or hearing before the same.”⁹ The abuse of this extensive power led to the passage of the Act of 1831, which limited the power of the federal courts to punish contempts to misbehavior in the presence of the courts “or so near thereto as to obstruct the administration of justice,” misbehavior of officers of courts in their official capacity, and disobedience or resistance to any lawful writ, process or order of the court.¹⁰

Writing for the Court to sustain the Act of 1831 in Ex parte Robinson, Justice Stephen Field described the nature of the contempt power as follows:

The power to punish for contempts is inherent in all courts; its existence is essential to

the preservation of order in judicial proceedings, and to the enforcement of the

judgments, orders, and writs of the courts, and consequently to the due administration

of justice. The moment the courts of the United States were called into existence and

invested with jurisdiction over any subject, they became possessed of this power.¹¹

While he expressed doubts concerning the validity of the 1831 Act as applied to the Supreme Court, Justice Field declared that there could be no question of its validity as applied to the lower courts because they are created by Congress and their “powers and duties depend upon the act calling them into existence, or subsequent acts extending or limiting their jurisdiction.”¹² With the passage of time, later adjudications, especially after 1890, came to place more emphasis on the inherent power of courts to punish contempts than upon the power of Congress to regulate summary attachment.

By 1911, the Court was saying that the contempt power must be exercised by a court without referring the issues of fact or law to another tribunal or to a jury in the same tribunal.¹³ In Michaelson v. United States, the Court narrowly interpreted sections of the Clayton Act relating to punishment for contempt of court by disobedience of injunctions in labor disputes.¹⁴ The sections in question provided for a jury upon the demand of the accused in contempt cases where the acts committed in violation of district court orders also constituted a crime. Although Justice George Sutherland reaffirmed earlier rulings establishing the authority of Congress to regulate the contempt power, he went on to qualify this authority and declared that “the attributes which inhere in the power [to punish contempt] and are inseparable from it can neither be abrogated nor rendered practically inoperative.”¹⁵ The Court mentioned specifically “the power to deal summarily with contempt committed in the presence of the courts or so near thereto as to obstruct the administration of justice,” and the power to enforce mandatory decrees by coercive means.¹⁶ The Court has held that this latter power to enforce includes the authority to appoint private counsel to prosecute a criminal contempt.¹⁷

Although the contempt power may be inherent, it is not unlimited. In Spallone v. United States, the Court held that a district court had abused its discretion by imposing contempt sanctions on individual members of a city council for refusing to vote to implement a consent decree remedying housing discrimination by the city.¹⁸ The Court held that, “in view of the ‘extraordinary’ nature of the imposition of sanctions against the individual councilmembers,” the proper remedy was to proceed first with contempt sanctions against the city, and only if that course failed should it proceed against the council members individually.¹⁹

In addition to the contempt power discussed above, the federal courts possess other inherent authorities to deter and punish misconduct.²⁰ The Supreme Court has explained that courts are elements of an independent and coequal branch of government, so once they are created and their jurisdiction established, they have the authority to do what courts have traditionally done in order to accomplish their assigned tasks.²¹ Those inherent powers may be limited by statutes and by rules.²² Nonetheless, the Court has asserted the power to act in areas not covered by statutes and rules and has held that Congress may regulate the courts’ inherent sanctions power only by unmistakably enunciating its intention to limit the courts’ inherent powers.²³

Thus, in Chambers v. NASCO, Inc., the Court upheld the imposition of monetary sanctions against a litigant and his attorney for bad-faith litigation conduct in a diversity case.²⁴ Some of the conduct was covered by a federal statute and several sanction provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, but some was not. The Court held that, absent a showing that Congress had intended to limit the courts, they could use their inherent powers to impose sanctions for the entire course of conduct, including shifting attorneys’ fees, which is ordinarily against the common-law American rule.²⁵ In another case, a party failed to comply with discovery orders and a court order concerning a schedule for filing briefs. The Supreme Court held that the attorneys’ fees statute did not allow assessment of such fees in that situation, but it remanded for consideration of sanctions under both a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure and the trial court’s inherent powers, subject to a finding of bad faith.²⁶ However, bad faith is not always required for the exercise of some inherent powers. For instance, courts may dismiss an action for an unexplained failure of the moving party to prosecute it.²⁷

ArtIII.S1.4.4 Inherent Power to Issue Judgments

Since 1792, the federal courts have emphasized finality of judgment as an essential attribute of judicial power. In that year, Congress authorized Revolutionary War veterans to file pension claims in circuit courts of the United States, directed the judges to certify to the Secretary of War the degree of a claimant’s disability and their opinion with regard to the proper percentage of monthly pay to be awarded, but empowered the Secretary to withhold judicially certified claimants from the pension list if he suspected “imposition or mistake.”¹ The Justices then on circuit almost immediately forwarded objections to the President, contending that the statute was unconstitutional because the judicial power was constitutionally committed to the Judicial department, the duties imposed by the act were not judicial, and the subjection of a court’s opinions to revision or control by an officer of the Executive or the Legislature was not authorized by the Constitution.²

In addition to the power to issue judgments, each federal court also possesses an inherent power to “to vacate its own judgment upon proof that a fraud has been perpetrated upon the court” or enforcement of the judgment would otherwise create inequity, and to “conduct an independent investigation in order to determine whether it has been the victim of fraud.”³ By contrast, the Court has held that Congress may not enact legislation that directs courts to reopen a final judgment.⁴

Federal courts also have authority to issue writs, though it is not clear whether the courts have any inherent power in this area absent statutory authorization by Congress. Since the Founding, Congress has assumed—under its power to establish inferior courts, its power to regulate the jurisdiction of federal courts, and the Necessary and Proper Clause—the power to regulate the issuance of writs.⁵ Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 authorized the Supreme Court “to issue writs of prohibition to the district courts, when proceeding as courts of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, and writs of mandamus, in cases warranted by the principles and usages of law, to any courts appointed, or persons holding office, under the authority of the United States.”⁶ Section 14 provided that all “courts of the United States shall have power to issue writs of scire facias, habeas corpus, and all other writs not specially provided for by statute, which may be necessary for the exercise of their respective jurisdictions, and agreeable to the principles and usages of law.”⁷

Although the Act of 1789 left the power to issues writs subject largely to the common law, it is significant as a reflection of the belief, in which the courts have generally concurred, that an act of Congress is necessary to confer judicial power to issue writs.⁸ Whether Article III itself is an independent source of the power of federal courts to fashion equitable remedies for constitutional violations or whether such remedies must fit within congressionally authorized writs or procedures is often left unexplored. In Missouri v. Jenkins, for example, the Court, rejecting a claim that a federal court exceeded judicial power under Article III by ordering local authorities to increase taxes to pay for desegregation remedies, declared that a court order directing a local government body to levy its own taxes is plainly a judicial act within the power of a federal court.⁹ In the same case, the Court refused to rule on the difficult constitutional issues presented by the state’s claim that the district court had exceeded its constitutional powers in a prior order directly raising taxes, instead ruling that the order had violated principles of comity.¹⁰