Cite as: 514 U. S. 211 (1995)
Stevens, J., dissenting
been pending on June 20, 1991—both those that remained pending on December 19, 1991, when § 27A was enacted, and those that courts dismissed between June 20 and December 19, 1991. Today the Court holds that the 1991 amendment violates the Constitution's separation of powers because, by encompassing the dismissed claims, it requires courts to reopen final judgments in private civil actions.
Section 27A is a statutory amendment to a rule of law announced by this Court. The fact that the new rule announced in Lampf was a product of judicial, rather than congressional, lawmaking should not affect the separation-of-powers analysis. We would have the same issue to decide had Congress enacted the Lampf rule but, as a result of inadvertence or perhaps a scrivener's error, failed to exempt pending cases, as is customary when limitations periods are shortened.1 In my opinion, if Congress had retroactively restored rights its own legislation had inadvertently or unfairly impaired, the remedial amendment's failure to exclude dismissed cases from the benefited class would not make it invalid. The Court today faces a materially identical situation and, in my view, reaches the wrong result.
Throughout our history, Congress has passed laws that allow courts to reopen final judgments. Such laws characteristically apply to judgments entered before as well as after their enactment. When they apply retroactively, they may raise serious due process questions,2 but the Court
1 Our decisions prior to Lampf consistently held that retroactive application of new, shortened limitations periods would violate "fundamental notions of justified reliance and due process." Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson, 501 U. S. 350, 371 (1991) (O'Connor, J., dissenting); see, e. g., Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U. S. 97 (1971); Saint Francis College v. Al-Khazraji, 481 U. S. 604 (1987).
2 Because the Court finds a separation-of-powers violation, it does not reach respondents' alternative theory that § 27A(b) denied them due process under the Fifth Amendment, a theory the Court of Appeals did not identify as an alternative ground for its holding. In my judgment, the statute easily survives a due process challenge. Section 27A(b) is ration-
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