Cite as: 514 U. S. 211 (1995)
Stevens, J., dissenting
was taken from that decree, it became final in 1828. In 1830 Congress passed a special statute authorizing the Arkansas court to reopen any decree entered under the 1824 statute if, prior to July 1, 1831, the United States filed a bill of review alleging that the decree had been based on forged evidence of title. The United States filed such a bill and obtained a reversal of the 1827 decree from the Arkansas court.
The successors in interest of the fictitious Mr. Sampeyreac argued in this Court that the Arkansas court should not have entertained the Government's bill of review because the 1830 statute "was the exercise of a judicial power, and it is no answer to this objection, that the execution of its provisions is given to a court. The legislature of the union cannot use such a power." Id., at 229. We categorically rejected that argument: "The law of 1830 is in no respect the exercise of judicial powers." Id., at 239. Of course, as the majority notes, ante, at 232-233, the particular decree at stake in Sampeyreac had issued not from an Article III court but from a territorial court. However, our opinion contains no suggestion that Congress' power to authorize the reopening of judgments entered by the Arkansas court was any broader than its power to authorize the reopening of judgments entered under the same statute by the United States District Court in Missouri. Moreover, the relevant judicial power that the 1830 statute arguably supplanted was this Court's Article III appellate jurisdiction—which, prior to the 1830 enactment, provided the only avenue for review of the trial courts' judgments.
Similarly, in Freeborn v. Smith, 2 Wall. 160 (1865), the Court rejected a challenge to an Act of Congress that removed an accidental impediment to the exercise of our appellate jurisdiction. When Congress admitted Nevada into the Union as a State in March 1864, ch. 36, 13 Stat. 30, it neglected to provide for the disposition of pending appeals from final judgments previously entered by the Supreme Court of
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