Cite as: 514 U. S. 211 (1995)
Stevens, J., dissenting
this enactment is the fact that it remedied a defect in a new judge-made rule rather than in a statute.
The familiar history the Court invokes, involving colonial legislatures' ad hoc decisions of individual cases, " 'unfettered by rules,' " ante, at 220 (quoting Vermont State Papers 1779- 1786, p. 540 (Slade ed. 1823)), provides no support for its holding. On the contrary, history and precedent demonstrate that Congress may enact laws that establish both substantive rules and procedures for reopening final judgments. When it enacted the 1991 amendment to the Lampf rule, Congress did not encroach on the judicial power. It decided neither the merits of any 10b-5 claim nor even whether any such claim should proceed to decision on the merits. It did provide that the rule governing the timeliness of 10b-5 actions pending on June 19, 1991, should be the pre-Lampf statute of limitations, and it also established a procedure for Article III courts to apply in determining whether any dismissed case should be reinstated. Congress' decision to extend that rule and procedure to 10b-5 actions dismissed during the brief period between this Court's law-changing decision in Lampf and Congress' remedial action is not a sufficient reason to hold the statute unconstitutional.
I
Respondents conducted a public offering of common stock in 1983. Petitioners, suing on behalf of themselves and other purchasers of the stock, filed a 10b-5 action in 1987 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, alleging violations of substantive federal rules that had been in place since 1934. Respondents moved to dismiss the complaint as untimely because petitioners had filed it more than three years after the events in dispute. At that time, settled law in Kentucky and elsewhere in the United States directed federal courts to determine statutes of limitations applicable to 10b-5 actions by reference to
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