Cite as: 537 U. S. 186 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
Sony, 464 U. S., at 429 ("[I]t is Congress that has been assigned the task of defining the scope of the limited monopoly that should be granted to authors . . . in order to give the public appropriate access to their work product.").10
The CTEA reflects judgments of a kind Congress typically makes, judgments we cannot dismiss as outside the Legislature's domain. As respondent describes, see Brief for Respondent 37-38, a key factor in the CTEA's passage was a 1993 European Union (EU) directive instructing EU members to establish a copyright term of life plus 70 years. EU Council Directive 93/98, Art. 1(1), p. 11; see 144 Cong. Rec. S12377-S12378 (daily ed. Oct. 12, 1998) (statement of Sen. Hatch). Consistent with the Berne Convention, the EU directed its members to deny this longer term to the works of any non-EU country whose laws did not secure the same extended term. See Berne Conv. Art. 7(8); P. Goldstein, International Copyright § 5.3, p. 239 (2001). By extending the baseline United States copyright term to life plus 70 years, Congress sought to ensure that American authors would re-10 Justice Breyer would adopt a heightened, three-part test for the constitutionality of copyright enactments. Post, at 245. He would invalidate the CTEA as irrational in part because, in his view, harmonizing the United States and European Union baseline copyright terms "apparent[ly]" fails to achieve "significant" uniformity. Post, at 264. But see infra this page and 206. The novelty of the "rational basis" approach he presents is plain. Cf. Board of Trustees of Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett, 531 U. S. 356, 383 (2001) (Breyer, J., dissenting) ("Rational-basis review— with its presumptions favoring constitutionality—is 'a paradigm of judicial restraint.' " (quoting FCC v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U. S. 307, 314 (1993))). Rather than subjecting Congress' legislative choices in the copyright area to heightened judicial scrutiny, we have stressed that "it is not our role to alter the delicate balance Congress has labored to achieve." Stewart v. Abend, 495 U. S., at 230; see Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U. S. 417, 429 (1984). Congress' exercise of its Copyright Clause authority must be rational, but Justice Breyer's stringent version of rationality is unknown to our literary property jurisprudence.
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