Barnhart v. Peabody Coal Co., 537 U.S. 149, 30 (2003)

Page:   Index   Previous  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34  35  36  37  Next

178

BARNHART v. PEABODY COAL CO.

Scalia, J., dissenting

Title 29 U. S. C. § 816(d)(1) (1976 ed., Supp. V) (now repealed) gave the Secretary of Labor "authority to . . . order such sanctions or corrective actions as are appropriate." Another provision of the statute, former § 816(b), required the Secretary, when investigating a complaint that a recipient is misusing funds, to "make the final determination . . . regarding the truth of the allegation . . . not later than 120 days after receiving the complaint." We held that the Secretary's failure to meet the 120-day deadline did not prevent him from ordering repayment of misspent funds. Respondent had not, we said, shown anything that caused the Secretary to "lose its power to act," 476 U. S., at 260 (emphasis added). Here, by contrast, the Commissioner never had power to act apart from the mandate, which expired after October 1, 1993.

In United States v. James Daniel Good Real Property, 510 U. S. 43 (1993), federal statutes authorized the Government to bring a forfeiture action within a 5-year limitation period. 21 U. S. C. § 881(a)(7); 19 U. S. C. § 1621. We held that that power was not revoked by the Government's failure to comply with some of the separate "internal timing requirements" set forth in §§ 1602-1604. Because those provisions failed to specify a consequence for noncompliance, we refused to "im-pose [our] own coercive sanction" of terminating the Govern-ment's authority to bring a forfeiture action. James Daniel Good, supra, at 63. The authorization separate from the defaulted obligation was not affected. There is no authorization separate from the defaulted obligation here.

In United States v. Montalvo-Murillo, 495 U. S. 711 (1990), the statute at issue, 18 U. S. C. § 3142(e), gave courts power to order pretrial detention "after a hearing pursuant to the provisions of subsection (f) of this section." One of those provisions was that the hearing "shall be held immediately upon the person's first appearance before the judicial officer . . . ." § 3142(f). The court had failed to hold a hearing immediately upon the respondent's first appearance, yet

Page:   Index   Previous  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34  35  36  37  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007