Article III, Section 1 — Congressional Control Over Judicial Power

ArtIII.S1.5.1 Overview of Congressional Control Over Judicial Power

The Framers structured the Constitution to promote the separation of powers and, in particular, to protect the Judiciary from undue influence by Congress and the Executive Branch.¹ Nonetheless, the Constitution does not impose complete separation between the Judiciary and the political branches. Congress possesses substantial authority to regulate how the federal courts exercise judicial power, albeit subject to certain constitutional limitations.

For instance, the Supreme Court rejected a separation of powers challenge to legislation establishing the U.S. Sentencing Commission as an independent agency within the Judicial Branch.² On the other hand, while Congress can change the substantive law courts must apply and alter the jurisdiction of the federal courts, sometimes even with respect to pending cases,³ it cannot direct the courts to reopen final judicial decisions.⁴ The following essays discuss those two issues. Other issues related to congressional control over the Federal Judiciary, including Congress’s power to establish federal courts,⁵ create court procedural rules,⁶ set federal court jurisdiction,⁷ and alter federal judges’ tenure in office,⁸ are discussed elsewhere in this volume.

ArtIII.S1.5.2 Reopening Final Judicial Decisions

The core of the judicial power is the authority to render dispositive judgments. Accordingly, the Supreme Court has held that Congress violates the separation of powers when it purports to alter, or allow the Executive Branch to alter, final judgments of Article III courts.¹

In 1792, in Hayburn’s Case, the Supreme Court considered a petition for a writ of mandamus to direct a federal circuit court to proceed on a claim seeking a federal pension.² The petitioner argued that the courts had failed to give effect to an act of Congress. The Court noted, however, that “the reasons assigned by the judges,” including Supreme Court Justices sitting on the circuit courts, “for declining to execute the . . . act of Congress, involve a great constitutional question.”³ Specifically, those judges contended that pension decisions under the Act were not judicial duties that Congress could constitutionally assign to the courts because the act rendered such decisions subject to review by the political branches.⁴ The Court heard argument on the mandamus petition but postponed its decision until the next term. While the case remained pending, Congress enacted legislation providing an alternative means of relief for the pensioners; the Court then dismissed the mandamus petition without deciding the underlying constitutional question.⁵

Although the Court in Hayburn’s Case did not decide the constitutionality of legislation subjecting court judgments to review by the political branches, the Court has since cited that decision to reject efforts to give federal courts jurisdiction over cases in which judgment would be subject to Executive or Legislative revision.⁶ For example, in the 1948 case Chicago & Southern Air Lines v. Waterman S.S. Corp., the Court held that an order of the Civil Aeronautics Board denying a certificate of convenience and necessity was not reviewable by the courts, despite statutory language to the contrary.⁷ Congress had also rendered such an order subject to discretionary review and revision by the President, but the Supreme Court agreed with a lower federal court that the Judiciary did not have the authority to review the President’s decision.⁸ While the lower court had attempted to reconcile the statutory scheme by permitting presidential review of the order after judicial review, the Supreme Court rejected that interpretation, stating: “[I]f the President may completely disregard the judgment of the court, it would be only because it is one the courts were not authorized to render. Judgments within the powers vested in courts by the Judiciary Article of the Constitution may not lawfully be revised, overturned or refused faith and credit by another Department of Government.”⁹

In the 1995 case Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., the Court held that legislation that directs courts to reopen a final judgment unconstitutionally intrudes on the Judiciary.¹⁰ Plaut involved an amendment to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that Congress enacted after a pair of Supreme Court opinions announced a time limit for bringing certain civil actions seeking damages under the Act.¹¹ The amended statute, Section 27A of the Securities Exchange Act, directed courts (upon a timely filed petition) to reinstate cases that had been dismissed because of the Court’s rulings but that would have been timely under the governing statute of limitations when initially filed.¹² In Plaut, the Supreme Court held that Section 27A’s reopening provision violated the doctrine of separation of powers.¹³ The Court explained that, by applying retroactively to final decisions, Section 27A “reverses a determination once made, in a particular case.”¹⁴ The Court distinguished the command in Section 27A from other retroactive laws that mandate “an appellate court [to] apply [the new] law in reviewing judgments still on appeal that were rendered before the law was enacted.”¹⁵ The Court emphasized the difference between attempting to alter a final judgment—one rendered by a court and either not appealed or affirmed on appeal—and legislatively amending a statute as applied to a decision that was on appeal or otherwise not final at the time a federal court reviewed the determination below. A court must apply the law as revised when it considers a case on appeal. However, the Court reasoned that “[h]aving achieved finality, . . . a judicial decision becomes the last word of the judicial department with regard to a particular case or controversy, and Congress may not declare by retroactive legislation that the law applicable to that very case was something other than what the courts said it was.”¹⁶ Thus, in directing courts to reopen nonpending, previously decided cases, Congress violates the separation of powers by “depriving judicial judgments of the conclusive effect that they had when they were announced.”¹⁷

While Congress cannot require courts to reopen final judgments, it can “alter[ ] the prospective effect of injunctions entered by Article III courts.”¹⁸ Thus, in Miller v. French, the Court upheld a provision of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that requires courts to stay a court-ordered injunction automatically for a specified period upon receiving a motion to terminate the injunction.¹⁹ The Court ruled that the automatic stay provision did not amount to an unconstitutional legislative revision of a final judgment.²⁰ Rather, it merely altered the prospective effect of injunctions, and it is well established that such prospective relief “remains subject to alteration due to changes in the underlying law.”²¹

ArtIII.S1.5.3 Imposing Non-Adjudicatory Functions on Courts

The Supreme Court has struck down congressional attempts to reassign constitutional functions from one branch of government to another branch, but has “upheld statutory provisions that to some degree commingle the functions of the Branches, but that pose no danger of either aggrandizement or encroachment.”¹ In Mistretta v. United States, the Supreme Court rejected a separation of powers challenge to legislation establishing the U.S. Sentencing Commission.² Through the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, Congress created the Sentencing Commission as an independent agency in the Judicial Branch tasked with promulgating sentencing guidelines for federal judges to use when sentencing convicted offenders.³ Under the Act, three Sentencing Commission members must be Article III judges. The President appoints all seven Commission members and can remove any member for cause.⁴ In Mistretta, a criminal defendant sought to have the Sentencing Guidelines the Commission promulgated ruled unconstitutional, arguing in part that the Commission was constituted in violation of the doctrine of separation of powers.⁵

Upholding the constitutionality of establishing the Sentencing Commission as an independent body in the Judicial Branch, the Court acknowledged that the Commission is not a court and does not exercise judicial power.⁶ Rather, its membership includes both judges and nonjudges, and its work has a “significantly political nature.”⁷ However, the Court held that the question of the Commission’s constitutionality turns not on formal distinctions between “political” and “judicial” functions, but rather on a practical inquiry whether the agency’s structure “undermin[es] the integrity of the Judicial Branch” or “expand[s] the powers of the Judiciary beyond constitutional bounds.”⁸ The Court held that “the placement of the Sentencing Commission in the Judicial Branch has not increased the Branch’s authority” because, “[p]rior to the passage of the Act, the Judicial Branch . . . decided precisely the questions assigned to the Commission: what sentence is appropriate to what criminal conduct under what circumstances.”⁹ The Court also rejected the challenger’s contention that participating in policymaking would inevitably weaken the Judiciary. The Court noted that “Congress placed the Commission in the Judicial Branch precisely because of the Judiciary’s special knowledge and expertise” with respect to sentencing, and concluded that this arrangement could not “possibly be construed as preventing the Judicial Branch ‘from accomplishing its constitutionally assigned functions.’”¹⁰ The Court further held that “the principle of separation of powers does not absolutely prohibit Article III judges from serving on [non-judicial] commissions” such as the Sentencing Commission or from sharing power on the Commission with members who are not judges.¹¹