266
Stevens, J., dissenting
than the will of the majority, must govern the disposition of individual cases and controversies. Any legislative interference in the adjudication of the merits of a particular case carries the risk that political power will supplant evenhanded justice, whether the interference occurs before or after the entry of final judgment. Cf. United States v. Klein, 13 Wall. 128 (1872); Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409 (1792). Section 27A(b) neither commands the reinstatement of any particular case nor directs any result on the merits. Congress recently granted a special benefit to a single litigant in a pending civil rights case, but the Court saw no need even to grant certiorari to review that disturbing legislative favor.22 In an ironic counterpoint, the Court today places a higher priority on protecting the Republic from the restoration to a large class of litigants of the opportunity to have Article III courts resolve the merits of their claims.
"We must remember that the machinery of government would not work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints." Bain Peanut Co. of Tex. v. Pinson, 282 U. S. 499, 501 (1931) (Holmes, J.). The three branches must cooperate in order to govern. We should regard favorably, rather than with suspicious hostility, legislation that enables the judiciary to overcome impediments to the performance of its mission of administering justice impartially, even when, as here, this Court has created the impediment.23 Rigid rules often make good law, but judgments in areas such as the review of potential conflicts among the three coequal branches of the
22 See Atonio v. Wards Cove Packing Co., 513 U. S. 809 (1994); see also Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 258 ("The parties agree that § 402(b) [of the Civil Rights Act of 1991] was intended to exempt a single disparate impact lawsuit against the Wards Cove Packing Company").
23 Of course, neither the majority nor I would alter its analysis had Congress, rather than the Court, enacted the Lampf rule without any exemption for pending cases, then later tried to remedy such unfairness by enacting § 27A. Thus, the Court's attribution of § 27A to "the legislature's genuine conviction (supported by all the law professors in the land) that [Lampf] was wrong," ante, at 228, is quite beside the point.
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