Clinton v. Goldsmith, 526 U.S. 529, 8 (1999)

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536

CLINTON v. GOLDSMITH

Opinion of the Court

missed him from service, but instead chose to impose only confinement and forfeitures.8 Hence, he says the CAAF merely preserved that sentence as the court-martial imposed it, by precluding additional punishment, which would incidentally violate the Ex Post Facto and Double Jeopardy Clauses. But this is beside the point, for two related reasons. First, Goldsmith's court-martial sentence has not been changed; another military agency has simply taken independent action.9 It would presumably be an entirely different matter if a military authority attempted to alter a judgment by revising a court-martial finding and sentence to increase the punishment, contrary to the specific provisions of the UCMJ, and it certainly would be a different matter when such a judgment had been affirmed by an appellate court. In such a case, as the Government concedes, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 15, 19, 52, the All Writs power would allow the appellate court to compel adherence to its own judgment. See, e. g., United States v. United States Dist. Court for Southern Dist. of N. Y., 334 U. S. 258, 263-264 (1948). Second, the CAAF is not given authority, by the All Writs Act or otherwise, to oversee all matters arguably related to military justice, or to act as a plenary administrator even of criminal judgments it has affirmed. Simply stated, there is no source of continuing jurisdiction for the CAAF over all actions administering sentences that the CAAF at one time had the power to review. Thus the CAAF spoke too expansively when it held itself to be "empowered by the All Writs Act to grant extraordinary relief in a case in which the court-martial rendered a sentence that constituted an

8 At the court-martial, respondent faced a maximum punishment of dismissal, confinement for 10 years, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a fine.

9 Indeed, the approved findings and sentence in Goldsmith's case had become final over one year before the Air Force initiated its action to drop him from the rolls.

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