Cite as: 511 U. S. 462 (1994)
Opinion of Souter, J.
It is not necessary to reach the question the Court answers in Part I, whether the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission's (Commission's) report is final agency action, because the text, structure, and purpose of the Act compel the conclusion that judicial review of the Commission's or the Secretary's compliance with it is precluded. There is, to be sure, a "strong presumption that Congress did not mean to prohibit all judicial review." Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476 U. S. 667, 672 (1986) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). But although no one feature of the Act, taken alone, is enough to overcome that strong presumption, I believe that the combination present in this unusual legislative scheme suffices.
In adopting the Act, Congress was intimately familiar with repeated, unsuccessful, efforts to close military bases in a rational and timely manner. See generally Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, Report to the President 1991.1 That history of frustration is reflected in the Act's text and intricate structure, which plainly express congressional intent that action on a base-closing package be quick and final, or no action be taken at all.
At the heart of the distinctive statutory regime, Congress placed a series of tight and rigid deadlines on administrative review and Presidential action, embodied in provisions for three biennial rounds of base closings, in 1991, 1993, and 1995 (the "base-closing years"), §§ 2903(b) and (c), note following 10 U. S. C. § 2687 (1988 ed., Supp. IV), with unbending deadlines prescribed for each round. The Secretary is obliged to forward base-closing recommendations to the Commission,
1 See also H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 101-923, p. 705 (1990) (Earlier base closures had "take[n] a considerable period of time and involve[d] numerous opportunities for challenges in court"); id., at 707 (Act "would considerably enhance the ability of the Department of Defense . . . promptly [to] implement proposals for base closures and realignment"); H. R. Rep. No. 101- 665, p. 384 (1990) ("Expedited procedures . . . are essential to make the base closure process work").
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