254
Stevens, J., dissenting
the Nevada Territory. Accordingly, the Freeborn defendants in error moved to dismiss a writ of error to the territorial court on the ground that we had no power to decide the case. At the suggestion of plaintiffs in error, the Court deferred ruling on the motion until after February 27, 1865, when Congress passed a special statute that authorized the Court to decide this and similar cases.7 Defendants in error renewed their motion, arguing that Congress could not reopen judgments that were already final and unreviewable because Congress was not competent to exercise judicial power.
Defendants in error argued that, "[i]f it be possible for a right to attach itself to a judgment, it has done so here, and there could not be a plainer case of an attempt to destroy it by legislative action." 2 Wall., at 165. The Court, however, noted that the omission in the 1864 statute had left the case "in a very anomalous situation," id., at 174, and that passage of the later statute "was absolutely necessary to remove an impediment in the way of any legal proceeding in the case." Id., at 175. It concluded that such "acts are of a remedial character, and are peculiar subjects of legislation. They are not liable to the imputation of being assumptions of judicial power." Ibid. As in Sampeyreac, although Freeborn in-7 The Act provided, in part: "That all cases of appeal or writ of error heretofore prosecuted and now pending in the supreme court of the United States, upon any record from the supreme court of the Territory of Nevada, may be heard and determined by the supreme court of the United States, and the mandate of execution or of further proceedings shall be directed by the supreme court of the United States to the district court of the United States for the district of Nevada, or to the supreme court of the State of Nevada, as the nature of said appeal or writ of error may require, and each of these courts shall be the successor of the supreme court of Nevada Territory as to all such cases, with full power to hear and determine the same, and to award mesne or final process thereon. . . . Provided, That said appeals shall be prosecuted and said writs of errors sued out at any time before the first day of July, eighteen hundred and sixty-six." Ch. 64, § 8, 13 Stat. 441.
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