Cite as: 517 U. S. 416 (1996)
Stevens, J., dissenting
timely and even though there is not a word in our Rules that authorized such action.
Thus, in United States v. Ohio Power Co., 351 U. S. 980 (1956), the Court on its own initiative vacated an earlier order denying a petition for rehearing and, in the following Term, granted the previously denied petition. United States v. Ohio Power Co., 353 U. S. 98 (1957). While Justice Harlan dissented from that disposition, he did not disagree with the proposition that "the Court's inherent power over its judgments" included the authority to take action that "would otherwise be out of time under the Rules." Id., at 104.
Just three years after the Ohio Power decision, Justice Harlan had occasion to endorse the exercise of a District Court's use of its inherent powers in apparent conflict with the language of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Explaining his denial of an application for bail, he correctly observed that those Rules should not be construed to withdraw the District Court's inherent power to revoke bail during the course of a criminal trial. See Fernandez v. United States, 81 S. Ct. 642, 644, n. 7, 5 L. Ed. 2d 683, 685, n. 7 (1961) (in chambers). In doing so, he exposed the basic flaw in an argument comparable to the one accepted by the Court today.
Justice Harlan explained that even though Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 46(a)(1) stated that a " 'person arrested for an offense not punishable by death shall be admitted to bail,' " that Rule did not purport to withdraw the district courts' "authority, as an incident of their inherent powers to manage the conduct of proceedings before them, to revoke bail during the course of a criminal trial, when such action is appropriate to the orderly progress of the trial and the fair administration of justice." Fernandez v. United States, 81 S. Ct., at 644, 645, n. 7, 5 L. Ed. 2d, at 685, n. 7, 686 (in chambers). He properly read the seemingly mandatory language of Rule 46(a)(1) against a pre-Rule legal back-
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