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NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports.  Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash-
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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
--------
No. 93-1121
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ED PLAUT, et ux., et al., PETITIONERS v.
SPENDTHRIFT FARM, INC., et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the sixth circuit
[April 18, 1995]

  Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court.
  The question presented in this case is whether 27A(b)
of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, to the extent
that it requires federal courts to reopen final judgments
in private civil actions under 10(b) of the Act, contra-
venes the Constitution's separation of powers or the Due
Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.


                            I
  In 1987, petitioners brought a civil action against
respondents in the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Kentucky.  The complaint alleged
that in 1983 and 1984 respondents had committed fraud
and deceit in the sale of stock in violation of 10(b) of
the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 of
the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The case was
mired in pretrial proceedings in the District Court until
June 20, 1991, when we decided Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind,
Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson, 501 U. S. 350 (1991).
Lampf held that -[l]itigation instituted pursuant to
10(b) and Rule 10b-5 . . . must be commenced within
one year after the discovery of the facts constituting the
violation and within three years after such violation.-
Id., at 364.  We applied that holding to the plaintiff-
respondents in Lampf itself, found their suit untimely,
and reinstated a summary judgment previously entered
in favor of the defendant-petitioners.  Ibid.  On the
same day we decided James B. Beam Distilling Co. v.
Georgia, 501 U. S. 529 (1991), in which a majority of
the Court held, albeit in different opinions, that a new
rule of federal law that is applied to the parties in the
case announcing the rule must be applied as well to all
cases pending on direct review.  See Harper v. Virginia
Dept. of Taxation, 509 U. S. ___, ___ (1993) (slip op., at
7-9).  The joint effect of Lampf and Beam was to
mandate application of the 1-year/3-year limitations
period to petitioners' suit.  The District Court, finding
that petitioners' claims were untimely under the Lampf
rule, dismissed their action with prejudice on August 13,
1991.  Petitioners filed no appeal; the judgment accord-
ingly became final 30 days later.  See 28 U. S. C.
2107(a) (1988 ed., Supp. V); Griffith v. Kentucky, 479
U. S. 314, 321, n. 6 (1987).
  On December 19, 1991, the President signed the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act
of 1991, 105 Stat. 2236.  Section 476 of the Act-a
section that had nothing to do with FDIC improve-
ments-became 27A of the Securities Exchange Act of
1934, and was later codified as 15 U. S. C. 78aa-1
(1988 ed., Supp. V).  It provides:
-(a) Effect on pending causes of action
      -The limitation period for any private civil action
implied under section 78j(b) of this title [10(b) of
the Securities Exchange Act of 1934] that was
commenced on or before June 19, 1991, shall be the
limitation period provided by the laws applicable in
the jurisdiction, including principles of retroactivity,
as such laws existed on June 19, 1991.

-(b) Effect on dismissed causes of action
      -Any private civil action implied under section
78j(b) of this title that was commenced on or before
June 19, 1991-
      -(1) which was dismissed as time barred subse-
      quent to June 19, 1991, and
      -(2) which would have been timely filed under the
      limitation period provided by the laws applicable
      in the jurisdiction, including principles of retroac-
      tivity, as such laws existed on June 19, 1991,
shall be reinstated on motion by the plaintiff not
later than 60 days after December 19, 1991.-
  On February 11, 1992, petitioners returned to the
District Court and filed a motion to reinstate the action
previously dismissed with prejudice.  The District Court
found that the conditions set out in 27A(b)(1) and (2)
were met, so that petitioners' motion was required to be
granted by the terms of the statute.  It nonetheless
denied the motion, agreeing with respondents that
27A(b) is unconstitutional.  Memorandum Opinion and
Order, Civ. Action No. 87-438 (ED Ky., Apr. 13, 1992).
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
affirmed.  1 F. 3d 1487 (1993).  We granted certiorari.
511 U. S. ___ (1994).


                           II
  Respondents bravely contend that 27A(b) does not
require federal courts to reopen final judgments, arguing
first that the reference to -the laws applicable in the
jurisdiction . . . as such laws existed on June 19, 1991-
(the day before Lampf was decided) may reasonably be
construed to refer precisely to the limitations period
provided in Lampf itself, in which case petitioners'
action was time barred even under 27A.  It is true
that -[a] judicial construction of a statute is an authori-
tative statement of what the statute meant before as
well as after the decision of the case giving rise to that
construction.-  Rivers v. Roadway Express, Inc., 511
U. S. ___, ___ (1994) (slip op., at 14); see also id., at
___,  n. 12 (slip op., at 14, n. 12).  But respondents'
argument confuses the question of what the law in fact
was on June 19, 1991, with the distinct question of what
27A means by its reference to what the law was.  We
think it entirely clear that it does not mean the law
enunciated in Lampf, for two independent reasons.
First, Lampf provides a uniform, national statute of
limitations (instead of using the applicable state limita-
tions period, as lower federal courts had previously done.
See Lampf, supra, at 354, and n. 1).  If the statute
referred to that law, its reference to the -laws applicable
in the jurisdiction- (emphasis added) would be quite
inexplicable.  Second, if the statute refers to the law
enunciated in Lampf it is utterly without effect, a result
to be avoided if possible.  American Nat. Red Cross v.
S. G., 505 U. S. ___, ___ (1992) (slip op., at 16-17); see
2A N. Singer, Sutherland on Statutory Construction
46.06 (4th ed. 1984).  It would say, in subsection (a),
that the limitation period is what the Supreme Court
has held to be the limitation period; and in subsection
(b), that suits dismissed as untimely under Lampf which
were timely under Lampf (a null set) shall be reinstated.
To avoid a constitutional question by holding that
Congress enacted and the President approved a blank
sheet of paper would indeed constitute -disingenuous
evasion.-  George Moore Ice Cream Co. v. Rose, 289 U. S.
373, 379 (1933).
  As an alternative reason why 27A(b) does not require
the reopening of final judgments, respondents suggest
that the subsection applies only to cases still pending in
the federal courts when 27A was enacted.  This has
only half the defect of the first argument, for it makes
only half of 27A purposeless-27A(b).  There is no
need to -reinstate- actions that are still pending; 27A(a)
(the new statute of limitations) could and would be
applied by the courts of appeals.  On respondents'
reading, the only consequence of 27A(b) would be the
negligible one of permitting the plaintiff in the pending
appeal from a statute-of-limitations dismissal to return
immediately to the district court, instead of waiting for
the court of appeals' reversal.  To enable 27A(b) to
achieve such an insignificant consequence, one must
disregard the language of the provision, which refers
generally to suits -dismissed as time barred.-  It is
perhaps arguable that this does not include suits that
are not yet finally dismissed, i.e., suits still pending on
appeal; but there is no basis for the contention that it
includes only those.  In short, there is no reasonable
construction on which 27A(b) does not require federal
courts to reopen final judgments in suits dismissed with
prejudice by virtue of Lampf.


                           III
  Respondents submit that 27A(b) violates both the
separation of powers and the Due Process Clause of the
Fifth Amendment.  Because the latter submission, if
correct, might dictate a similar result in a challenge to
state legislation under the Fourteenth Amendment, the
former is the narrower ground for adjudication of the
constitutional questions in the case, and we therefore
consider it first.  Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 347
(1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring).  We conclude that in
27A(b) Congress has exceeded its authority by requiring
the federal courts to exercise -the judicial Power of the
United States,- U. S. Const., Art. III, 1, in a manner
repugnant to the text, structure and traditions of Article
III.
  Our decisions to date have identified two types of
legislation that require federal courts to exercise the
judicial power in a manner that Article III forbids.  The
first appears in United States v. Klein, 13 Wall. 128
(1872), where we refused to give effect to a statute that
was said -[t]o prescribe rules of decision to the Judicial
Department of the government in cases pending before
it.-  Id., at 146.  Whatever the precise scope of Klein,
however, later decisions have made clear that its
prohibition does not take hold when Congress -amend[s]
applicable law.-  Robertson v. Seattle Audubon Society,
503 U. S. 429, 441 (1992).  Section 27A(b) indisputably
does set out substantive legal standards for the Judi-
ciary to apply, and in that sense changes the law (even
if solely retroactively).  The second type of unconstitu-
tional restriction upon the exercise of judicial power
identified by past cases is exemplified by Hayburn's
Case, 2 Dall. 409 (1792), which stands for the principle
that Congress cannot vest review of the decisions of
Article III courts in officials of the Executive Branch.
See, e.g., Chicago & Southern Air Lines, Inc. v.
Waterman S. S. Corp., 333 U. S. 103 (1948).  Yet under
any application of 27A(b) only courts are involved; no
officials of other departments sit in direct review of their
decisions.  Section 27A(b) therefore offends neither of
these previously established prohibitions.
  We think, however, that 27A(b) offends a postulate of
Article III just as deeply rooted in our law as those we
have mentioned.  Article III establishes a -judicial
department- with the -province and duty . . . to say
what the law is- in particular cases and controversies.
Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803).  The
record of history shows that the Framers crafted this
charter of the judicial department with an expressed
understanding that it gives the Federal Judiciary the
power, not merely to rule on cases, but to decide them,
subject to review only by superior courts in the Article
III hierarchy-with an understanding, in short, that -a
judgment conclusively resolves the case- because -a
`judicial Power' is one to render dispositive judgments.-
Easterbrook, Presidential Review, 40 Case W. Res. L.
Rev. 905, 926 (1990).  By retroactively commanding the
federal courts to reopen final judgments, Congress has
violated this fundamental principle.


                            A
  The Framers of our Constitution lived among the ruins
of a system of intermingled legislative and judicial
powers, which had been prevalent in the colonies long
before the Revolution, and which after the Revolution
had produced factional strife and partisan oppression.
In the 17th and 18th centuries colonial assemblies and
legislatures functioned as courts of equity of last resort,
hearing original actions or providing appellate review of
judicial judgments.  G. Wood, The Creation of the
American Republic 1776-1787, pp. 154-155 (1969).
Often, however, they chose to correct the judicial process
through special bills or other enacted legislation.  It was
common for such legislation not to prescribe a resolution
of the dispute, but rather simply to set aside the
judgment and order a new trial or appeal.  M. Clarke,
Parliamentary Privilege in the American Colonies 49-51
(1943).  See, e.g., Judicial Action by the Provincial
Legislature of Massachusetts, 15 Harv. L. Rev. 208
(1902) (collecting documents from 1708-1709); 5 Laws of
New Hampshire, Including Public and Private Acts,
Resolves, Votes, etc., 1784-1792, p. ___ (Metcalf ed.
1916).  Thus, as described in our discussion of Hayburn's
Case, supra, at 6-7, such legislation bears not on the
problem of interbranch review but on the problem of
finality of judicial judgments.
  The vigorous, indeed often radical, populism of the
revolutionary legislatures and assemblies increased the
frequency of legislative correction of judgments.  Wood,
supra, at 155-156, 407-408.  See also INS v. Chadha,
462 U. S. 919, 961 (1983) (Powell, J., concurring).  -The
period 1780-1787 . . . was a period of `constitutional
reaction'- to these developments, -which . . . leaped
suddenly to its climax in the Philadelphia Convention.-
E. Corwin, The Doctrine of Judicial Review 37 (1914).
Voices from many quarters, official as well as private,
decried the increasing legislative interference with the
private-law judgments of the courts.  In 1786 the
Vermont Council of Censors issued an -Address of the
Council of Censors to the Freemen of the State of
Vermont,- to fulfill the Council's duty, under the State
Constitution of 1784, to report to the people -`whether
the legislative and executive branches of government
have assumed to themselves, or exercised, other or
greater powers than they are entitled to by the Constitu-
tion.'-  Vermont State Papers 1779-1786, pp. 531, 533
(Slade ed. 1823).  A principal method of usurpation
identified by the Censors was -[t]he instances . . . of
judgments being vacated by legislative acts.-  Id., at
540.  The Council delivered an opinion
-that the General Assembly, in all the instances
where they have vacated judgments, recovered in
due course of law, (except where the particular
circumstances of the case evidently made it neces-
sary to grant a new trial) have exercised a power
not delegated, or intended to be delegated, to them,
by the Constitution. . . . It supercedes the necessity
of any other law than the pleasure of the Assembly,
and of any other court than themselves: for it is an
imposition on the suitor, to give him the trouble of
obtaining, after several expensive trials, a final
judgment agreeably to the known established laws
of the land; if the Legislature, by a sovereign act,
can interfere, reverse the judgment, and decree in
such manner, as they, unfettered by rules, shall
think proper.-  Ibid.
  So too, the famous report of the Pennsylvania Council
of Censors in 1784 detailed the abuses of legislative
interference with the courts at the behest of private
interests and factions.  As the General Assembly had
(they wrote) made a custom of -extending their delibera-
tions to the cases of individuals,- the people had -been
taught to consider an application to the legislature, as
a shorter and more certain mode of obtaining relief from
hardships and losses, than the usual process of law.-
The Censors noted that because -favour and partiality
have, from the nature of public bodies of men, predomi-
nated in the distribution of this relief . . . these danger-
ous procedures have been too often recurred to, since the
revolution.-  Report of the Committee of the Council of
Censors 6 (Bailey ed. 1784).
  This sense of a sharp necessity to separate the
legislative from the judicial power, prompted by the
crescendo of legislative interference with private judg-
ments of the courts, triumphed among the Framers of
the new Federal Constitution.  See Corwin, The Progress
of Constitutional Theory Between the Declaration of
Independence and the Meeting of the Philadelphia
Convention, 30 Am. Hist. Rev. 511, 514-517 (1925).  The
Convention made the critical decision to establish a
judicial department independent of the Legislative
Branch by providing that -the judicial Power of the
United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and
in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time
to time ordain and establish.-  Before and during the
debates on ratification, Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton
each wrote of the factional disorders and disarray that
the system of legislative equity had produced in the
years before the framing; and each thought that the
separation of the legislative from the judicial power in
the new Constitution would cure them.  Madison's
Federalist No. 48, the famous description of the process
by which -[t]he legislative department is every where
extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all
power into its impetuous vortex,- referred to the report
of the Pennsylvania Council of Censors to show that in
that State -cases belonging to the judiciary department
[had been] frequently drawn within legislative cogni-
zance and determination.-  The Federalist No. 48,
pp. 333, 337 (J. Cooke ed. 1961).  Madison relied as well
on Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, which
mentioned, as one example of the dangerous concentra-
tion of governmental powers into the hands of the
legislature, that -the Legislature . . . in many instances
decided rights which should have been left to judiciary
controversy.-  Id., at 336 (emphasis deleted).
  If the need for separation of legislative from judicial
power was plain, the principal effect to be accomplished
by that separation was even plainer.  As Hamilton wrote
in his exegesis of Article III, 1, in Federalist No. 81:
-It is not true . . . that the parliament of Great
Britain, or the legislatures of the particular states,
can rectify the exceptionable decisions of their
respective courts, in any other sense than might be
done by a future legislature of the United States.
The theory neither of the British, nor the state
constitutions, authorises the revisal of a judicial
sentence, by a legislative act. . . .  A legislature
without exceeding its province cannot reverse a
determination once made, in a particular case;
though it may prescribe a new rule for future
cases.-  The Federalist No. 81, p. 545 (J. Cooke ed.
1961).
The essential balance created by this allocation of
authority was a simple one.  The Legislature would be
possessed of power to -prescrib[e] the rules by which the
duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated,-
but the power of -[t]he interpretation of the laws- would
be -the proper and peculiar province of the courts.-  The
Federalist No. 78, p. 523, 525 (J. Cooke ed. 1961).  See
also Corwin, The Doctrine of Judicial Review, at 42.
The Judiciary would be, -from the nature of its func-
tions, . . . the [department] least dangerous to the
political rights of the constitution,- not because its acts
were subject to legislative correction, but because the
binding effect of its acts was limited to particular cases
and controversies.  Thus, -though individual oppression
may now and then proceed from the courts of justice,
the general liberty of the people can never be endan-
gered from that quarter: . . . so long as the judiciary
remains truly distinct from both the legislative and
executive.-  The Federalist No. 78, pp. 522, 523 (J.
Cooke ed. 1961).
  Judicial decisions in the period immediately after
ratification of the Constitution confirm the understand-
ing that it forbade interference with the final judgments
of courts.  In Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386 (1798), the
Legislature of Connecticut had enacted a statute that set
aside the final judgment of a state court in a civil case.
Although  the issue before this Court was the construc-
tion of the Ex Post Facto Clause, Art. I, 10, Justice
Iredell (a leading Federalist who had guided the Consti-
tution to ratification in North Carolina) noted that
-the Legislature of [Connecticut] has been in the
uniform, uninterrupted, habit of exercising a general
superintending power over its courts of law, by
granting new trials.  It may, indeed, appear strange
to some of us, that in any form, there should exist
a power to grant, with respect to suits depending or
adjudged, new rights of trial, new privileges of
proceeding, not previously recognized and regulated
by positive institutions . . . .  The power . . . is
judicial in its nature; and whenever it is exercised,
as in the present instance, it is an exercise of
judicial, not of legislative, authority.-  Id., at 398.
The state courts of the era showed a similar understand-
ing of the separation of powers, in decisions that drew
little distinction between the federal and state constitu-
tions.  To choose one representative example from a
multitude: in Bates v. Kimball, 2 Chipman 77 (Vt. 1824),
a special Act of the Vermont Legislature authorized a
party to appeal from the judgment of a court even
though, under the general law, the time for appeal had
expired.  The court, noting that the unappealed judg-
ment had become final, set itself the question -Have the
Legislature power to vacate or annul an existing
judgment between party and party?-  Id., at 83.  The
answer was emphatic: -The necessity of a distinct and
separate existence of the three great departments of
government . . . had been proclaimed and enforced by
. . . Blackstone, Jefferson and Madison,- and had been
-sanctioned by the people of the United States, by being
adopted in terms more or less explicit, into all their
written constitutions.-  Id., at 84.  The power to annul
a final judgment, the court held (citing Hayburn's Case,
2 Dall., at 410), was -an assumption of Judicial power,-
and therefore forbidden.  Bates v. Kimball, supra, at 90.
For other examples, see Merrill v. Sherburne, 1 N. H.
199 (1818) (legislature may not vacate a final judgment
and grant a new trial); Lewis v. Webb, 3 Greenleaf 299
(Me. 1825) (same); T. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations
95-96 (1868) (collecting cases); J. Sutherland, Statutory
Construction 18-19 (J. Lewis ed. 1904) (same).
  By the middle of the 19th century, the constitutional
equilibrium created by the separation of the legislative
power to make general law from the judicial power to
apply that law in particular cases was so well under-
stood and accepted that it could survive even Dred Scott
v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857).  In his First Inaugural
Address, President Lincoln explained why the political
branches could not, and need not, interfere with even
that infamous judgment:
-I do not forget the position assumed by some, that
constitutional questions are to be decided by the
Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions
must be binding in any case, upon the parties to a
suit, as to the object of that suit . . . .  And while
it is obviously possible that such decision may be
erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect
following it, being limited to that particular case,
with the chance that it may be over-ruled, and
never become a precedent for other cases, can better
be borne than could the evils of a different practice.-
4 R. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham
Lincoln 268 (1953) (First Inaugural Address 1861).
And the great constitutional scholar Thomas Cooley
addressed precisely the question before us in his 1868
treatise:
      -If the legislature cannot thus indirectly control
the action of the courts, by requiring of them a
construction of the law according to its own views,
it is very plain it cannot do so directly, by setting
aside their judgments, compelling them to grant new
trials, ordering the discharge of offenders, or direct-
ing what particular steps shall be taken in the
progress of a judicial inquiry.-  T. Cooley, supra, at
94-95.

                            B
  Section 27A(b) effects a clear violation of the separa-
tion-of-powers principle we have just discussed.  It is, of
course, retroactive legislation, that is, legislation that
prescribes what the law was at an earlier time, when
the act whose effect is controlled by the legislation
occurred-in this case, the filing of the initial Rule
10b-5 action in the District Court.  When retroactive
legislation requires its own application in a case already
finally adjudicated, it does no more and no less than
-reverse a determination once made, in a particular
case.-  The Federalist No. 81, p. 545 (J. Cooke ed. 1961).
Our decisions stemming from Hayburn's Case-although
their precise holdings are not strictly applicable here,
see supra, at 6-7-have uniformly provided fair warning
that such an act exceeds the powers of Congress.  See,
e.g., Chicago & Southern Air Lines, Inc., 333 U. S., at
113 (-[J]udgments within the powers vested in courts by
the Judiciary Article of the Constitution may not
lawfully be revised, overturned or refused faith and
credit by another Department of Government-); United
States v. O'Grady, 22 Wall. 641, 647-648 (1875) (-Judi-
cial jurisdiction implies the power to hear and determine
a cause, and . . . Congress cannot subject the judgments
of the Supreme Court to the re-examination and revision
of any other tribunal-); Gordon v. United States, 117
U. S. 697, 700-704 (opinion of Taney, C. J.) (decided
1864, printed 1885) (judgments of Article III courts are
-final and conclusive upon the rights of the parties-);
Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall., at 411 (opinion of Wilson and
Blair JJ., and Peters, D. J.) (-[R]evision and control- of
Article III judgments is -radically inconsistent with the
independence of that judicial power which is vested in
the courts-); id., at 413 (opinion of Iredell, J., and
Sitgreaves, D. J.) (-[N]o decision of any court of the
United States can, under any circumstances, . . . be
liable to a revision, or even suspension, by the [l]egisla-
ture itself, in whom no judicial power of any kind
appears to be vested-).  See also Pennsylvania v.
Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co., 18 How. 421, 431
(1856) (-[I]t is urged, that the act of congress cannot
have the effect and operation to annul the judgment of
the court already rendered, or the rights determined
thereby . . . . This, as a general proposition, is certainly
not to be denied, especially as it respects adjudication
upon the private rights of parties.  When they have
passed into judgment the right becomes absolute, and it
is the duty of the court to enforce it-).  Today those
clear statements must either be honored, or else proved
false.
  It is true, as petitioners contend, that Congress can
always revise the judgments of Article III courts in one
sense: When a new law makes clear that it is retroac-
tive, an appellate court must apply that law in review-
ing judgments still on appeal that were rendered before
the law was enacted, and must alter the outcome
accordingly.  See United States v. Schooner Peggy, 1
Cranch 103 (1801); Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511
U. S. ___, ___-___ (1994) (slip op., at 28-43).  Since that
is so, petitioners argue, federal courts must apply the
-new- law created by 27A(b) in finally adjudicated cases
as well; for the line that separates lower court judg-
ments that are pending on appeal (or may still be
appealed), from lower-court judgments that are final, is
determined by statute, see, e.g., 28 U. S. C. 2107(a)
(30-day time limit for appeal to federal court of appeals),
and so cannot possibly be a constitutional line.  But a
distinction between judgments from which all appeals
have been forgone or completed, and judgments that
remain on appeal (or subject to being appealed), is
implicit in what Article III creates: not a batch of
unconnected courts, but a judicial department composed
of -inferior Courts- and -one supreme Court.-  Within
that hierarchy, the decision of an inferior court is not
(unless the time for appeal has expired) the final word
of the department as a whole.  It is the obligation of the
last court in the hierarchy that rules on the case to give
effect to Congress's latest enactment, even when that
has the effect of overturning the judgment of an inferior
court, since each court, at every level, must -decide
according to existing laws.-  Schooner Peggy, supra, at
109.  Having achieved finality, however, a judicial
decision becomes the last word of the judicial depart-
ment with regard to a particular case or controversy,
and Congress may not declare by retroactive legislation
that the law applicable to that very case was something
other than what the courts said it was.  Finality of a
legal judgment is determined by statute, just as entitle-
ment to a government benefit is a statutory creation;
but that no more deprives the former of its constitu-
tional significance for separation-of-powers analysis than
it deprives the latter of its significance for due process
purposes.  See, e.g., Cleveland Bd. of Ed. v. Loudermill,
470 U. S. 532 (1985); Meachum v. Fano, 427 U. S. 215
(1976).
  To be sure, 27A(b) reopens (or directs the reopening
of) final judgments in a whole class of cases rather than
in a particular suit.  We do not see how that makes any
difference.  The separation-of-powers violation here, if
there is any, consists of depriving judicial judgments of
the conclusive effect that they had when they were
announced, not of acting in a manner-viz., with
particular rather than general effect-that is unusual
(though, we must note, not impossible) for a legislature.
To be sure, a general statute such as this one may
reduce the perception that legislative interference with
judicial judgments was prompted by individual favorit-
ism; but it is legislative interference with judicial
judgments nonetheless.  Not favoritism, nor even corrup-
tion, but power is the object of the separation-of-powers
prohibition.  The prohibition is violated when an
individual final judgment is legislatively rescinded for
even the very best of reasons, such as the legislature's
genuine conviction (supported by all the law professors
in the land) that the judgment was wrong; and it is
violated 40 times over when 40 final judgments are
legislatively dissolved.
  It is irrelevant as well that the final judgments re-
opened by 27A(b) rested on the bar of a statute of
limitations.  The rules of finality, both statutory and
judge-made, treat a dismissal on statute-of-limitations
grounds the same way they treat a dismissal for failure
to state a claim, for failure to prove substantive liability,
or for failure to prosecute: as a judgment on the merits.
See, e.g., Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 41(b); United States v.
Oppenheimer, 242 U. S. 85, 87-88 (1916).  Petitioners
suggest, directly or by implication, two reasons why a
merits judgment based on this particular ground may be
uniquely subject to congressional nullification.  First,
there is the fact that the length and indeed even the
very existence of a statute of limitations upon a federal
cause of action is entirely subject to congressional
control.  But virtually all of the reasons why a final
judgment on the merits is rendered on a federal claim
are subject to congressional control.  Congress can
eliminate, for example, a particular element of a cause
of action that plaintiffs have found it difficult to estab-
lish; or an evidentiary rule that has often excluded
essential testimony; or a rule of offsetting wrong (such
as contributory negligence) that has often prevented
recovery.  To distinguish statutes of limitations on the
ground that they are mere creatures of Congress is to
distinguish them not at all.  The second supposedly
distinguishing characteristic of a statute of limitations
is that it can be extended, without violating the Due
Process Clause, after the cause of the action arose and
even after the statute itself has expired.  See, e.g.,
Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U. S. 304
(1945).  But that also does not set statutes of limitations
apart.  To mention only one other broad category of
judgment-producing legal rule: rules of pleading and
proof can similarly be altered after the cause of action
arises, Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S., at ___,
and n. 29 (slip op., at 30-31, and n. 29), and even, if
the statute clearly so requires, after they have been
applied in a case but before final judgment has been
entered.  Petitioners' principle would therefore lead to
the conclusion that final judgments rendered on the
basis of a stringent (or, alternatively, liberal) rule of
pleading or proof may be set aside for retrial under a
new liberal (or, alternatively, stringent) rule of pleading
or proof.  This alone provides massive scope for undoing
final judgments and would substantially subvert the
doctrine of separation of powers.
  The central theme of the dissent is a variant on these
arguments.  The dissent maintains that Lampf -an-
nounced- a new statute of limitations, post, at 1, in an
act of -judicial . . . lawmaking,- post, at 2, that -changed
the law.-  Post, at 5.  That statement, even if relevant,
would be wrong.  The point decided in Lampf had never
before been addressed by this Court, and was therefore
an open question, no matter what the lower courts had
held at the time.  But the more important point is that
Lampf as such is irrelevant to this case.  The dissent
itself perceives that -[w]e would have the same issue to
decide had Congress enacted the Lampf rule,- and that
the Lampf rule's genesis in judicial lawmaking rather
than, shall we say, legislative lawmaking, -should not
affect the separation-of-powers analysis.-  Post,, at 2.
Just so.  The issue here is not the validity or even the
source of the legal rule that produced the Article III
judgments, but rather the immunity from legislative
abrogation of those judgments themselves.  The separa-
tion-of-powers question before us has nothing to do with
Lampf, and the dissent's attack on Lampf has nothing
to do with the question before us.

                            C
  Apart from the statute we review today, we know of
no instance in which Congress has attempted to set
aside the final judgment of an Article III court by
retroactive legislation.  That prolonged reticence would
be amazing if such interference were not understood to
be constitutionally proscribed.  The closest analogue that
the Government has been able to put forward is the
statute at issue in United States v. Sioux Nation, 448
U. S. 371 (1980).  That law required the Court of
Claims, -`[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law
. . . to review on the merits, without regard to the
defense of res judicata or collateral estoppel,'- a Sioux
claim for just compensation from the United
States-even though the Court of Claims had previously
heard and rejected that very claim.  We considered and
rejected separation-of-powers objections to the statute
based upon Hayburn's Case and United States v. Klein.
See 448 U. S., at 391-392.  The basis for our rejection
was a line of precedent (starting with Cherokee Nation
v. United States, 270 U. S. 476 (1926)) that stood, we
said, for the proposition that -Congress has the power to
waive the res judicata effect of a prior judgment entered
in the Government's favor on a claim against the United
States.-  Sioux Nation, 448 U. S., at 397.  And our
holding was as narrow as the precedent on which we
had relied: -In sum, . . . Congress' mere waiver of the
res judicata effect of a prior judicial decision rejecting
the validity of a legal claim against the United States
does not violate the doctrine of separation of powers.-
Id., at 407.
  The Solicitor General suggests that even if Sioux
Nation is read in accord with its holding, it nonetheless
establishes that Congress may require Article III courts
to reopen their final judgments, since -if res judicata
were compelled by Article III to safeguard the structural
independence of the courts, the doctrine would not be
subject to waiver by any party litigant.-  Brief for
United States 27 (citing Commodity Futures Trading
Comm'n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833, 850-851 (1986)).  But
the proposition that legal defenses based upon doctrines
central to the courts' structural independence can never
be waived simply does not accord with our cases.
Certainly one such doctrine consists of the -judicial
Power- to disregard an unconstitutional statute, see
Marbury, 1 Cranch, at 177; yet none would suggest that
a litigant may never waive the defense that a statute is
unconstitutional.  See, e.g., G. D. Searle & Co. v. Cohn,
455 U. S. 404, 414 (1982).  What may follow from our
holding that the judicial power unalterably includes the
power to render final judgments, is not that waivers of
res judicata are always impermissible, but rather that,
as many federal Courts of Appeals have held, waivers of
res judicata need not always be accepted-that trial
courts may in appropriate cases raise the res judicata
bar on their own motion.  See, e.g., Coleman v. Ramada
Hotel Operating Co., 933 F. 2d 470, 475 (CA7 1991); In
re Medomak Canning, 922 F. 2d 895, 904 (CA1 1990);
Holloway Constr. Co. v. United States Dept. of Labor,
891 F. 2d 1211, 1212 (CA6 1989).  Waiver subject to the
control of the courts themselves would obviously raise no
issue of separation of powers, and would be precisely in
accord with the language of the decision that the
Solicitor General relies upon.  We held in Schor that,
although a litigant had consented to bring a state-law
counterclaim before an Article I tribunal, 478 U. S., at
849, we would nonetheless choose to consider his Article
III challenge, because -where these Article III limita-
tions are at issue, notions of consent and waiver cannot
be dispositive.-  Id., at 851 (emphasis added).  See also
Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U. S. 868, 878-879 (1991)
(finding a -rare cas[e] in which we should exercise our
discretion- to hear a waived claim based on the Appoint-
ments Clause, Art. II, 2, cl. 2).
  Petitioners also rely on a miscellany of decisions
upholding legislation that altered rights fixed by the
final judgments of non-Article III courts, see, e.g.,
Sampeyreac v. United States, 7 Pet. 222, 238 (1833);
Freeborn v. Smith, 2 Wall. 160 (1865), or administrative
agencies, Paramino Lumber Co. v. Marshall, 309 U. S.
370 (1940), or that altered the prospective effect of
injunctions entered by Article III courts, Wheeling &
Belmont Bridge Co., 18 How., at 421.  These cases
distinguish themselves; nothing in our holding today
calls them into question.  Petitioners rely on general
statements from some of these cases that legislative
annulment of final judgments is not an exercise of
judicial power.  But even if it were our practice to
decide cases by weight of prior dicta, we would find the
many dicta that reject congressional power to revise the
judgments of Article III courts to be the more instructive
authority.  See supra, at 14-15.
  Finally, petitioners liken 27A(b) to Federal Rule of
Civil Procedure 60(b), which authorizes courts to relieve
parties from a final judgment for grounds such as
excusable neglect, newly discovered evidence, fraud, or
-any other reason justifying relief . . . .-  We see little
resemblance.  Rule 60(b), which authorizes discretionary
judicial revision of judgments in the listed situations and
in other -extraordinary circumstances,- Liljeberg v.
Health Services Acquisition Corp., 486 U. S. 847, 864
(1988), does not impose any legislative mandate-to-
reopen upon the courts, but merely reflects and confirms
the courts' own inherent and discretionary power, -firmly
established in English practice long before the founda-
tion of our Republic,- to set aside a judgment whose
enforcement would work inequity.  Hazel-Atlas Glass Co.
v. Hartford-Empire Co., 322 U. S. 238, 244 (1944).
Thus, Rule 60(b), and the tradition that it embodies,
would be relevant refutation of a claim that reopening
a final judgment is always a denial of property without
due process; but they are irrelevant to the claim that
legislative instruction to reopen impinges upon the
independent constitutional authority of the courts.
  The dissent promises to provide -[a] few contemporary
examples- of statutes retroactively requiring final
judgments to be reopened, -to demonstrate that [such
statutes] are ordinary products of the exercise of legisla-
tive power.-  Post, at 12.  That promise is not kept.
The relevant retroactivity, of course, consists not of the
requirement that there be set aside a judgment that has
been rendered prior to its being setting aside-for
example, a statute passed today which says that all
default judgments rendered in the future may be
reopened within 90 days after their entry.  In that
sense, all requirements to reopen are -retroactive,- and
the designation is superfluous.  Nothing we say today
precludes a law such as that.  The finality that a court
can pronounce is no more than what the law in exis-
tence at the time of judgment will permit it to pro-
nounce.  If the law then applicable says that the
judgment may be reopened for certain reasons, that
limitation is built into the judgment itself, and its
finality is so conditioned.  The present case, however,
involves a judgment that Congress subjected to a
reopening requirement which did not exist when the
judgment was pronounced.  The dissent provides not a
single clear prior instance of such congressional action.
  The dissent cites, first, Rule 60(b), which it describes
as a -familiar remedial measure.-  Post, at 12.  As we
have just discussed, Rule 60(b) does not provide a new
remedy at all, but is simply the recitation of pre-existing
judicial power.  The same is true of another of the
dissent's examples, 28 U. S. C. 2255, which provides
federal prisoners a statutory motion to vacate a federal
sentence.  This procedure -`restates, clarifies and simpli-
fies the procedure in the nature of the ancient writ of
error coram nobis.'-  United States v. Hayman, 342
U. S. 205, 218 (1952) (quoting the 1948 Reviser's Note
to 2255).  It is meaningless to speak of these statutes
as applying -retroactively,- since they simply codified
judicial practice that pre-existed.  Next, the dissent cites
the provision of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act
of 1940, 54 Stat. 1178, 50 U. S. C. App. 520(4), which
authorizes courts, upon application, to reopen judgments
against members of the Armed Forces entered while
they were on active duty.  It could not be clearer,
however, that this provision was not retroactive.  It
says: -If any judgment shall be rendered in any action
or proceeding governed by this section against any
person in military service during the period of such
service . . . such judgment may . . . be opened . . . .-
(Emphasis added).
  The dissent also cites, post, at 14, a provision of the
Handicapped Children's Protection Act of 1986, 82 Stat.
901, 20 U. S. C. 1415(e)(4)(B) (1988 ed. and Supp. V),
which provided for the award of attorney's fees under
the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975,
89 Stat. 773, 20 U. S. C. 1411 et seq. (1988 ed. and
Supp. V).  This changed the law regarding attorney's
fees under the Education for All Handicapped Children
Act, after our decision in Smith v. Robinson, 468 U. S.
992 (1984), found such fees to be unavailable.  The
provision of the Statutes at Large adopting this amend-
ment to the United States Code specified, in effect, that
it would apply not only to proceedings brought after its
enactment, but also to proceedings pending at the time
of, or brought after, the decision in Smith.  See 100
Stat. 798.  The amendment says nothing about reopen-
ing final judgments, and the retroactivity provision may
well mean nothing more than that it applies not merely
to new suits commenced after the date of its enactment,
but also to previously filed (but not yet terminated) suits
of the specified sort.  This interpretation would be
consistent with the only case the dissent cites, which
involved a court-entered consent decree not yet fully
executed.  Counsel v. Dow, 849 F. 2d 731, 734, 738-739
(CA2 1988).  Alternatively, the statute can perhaps be
understood to create a new cause of action for attorney's
fees attributable to already concluded litigation.  That
would create no separation-of-powers problem, and would
be consistent with this Court's view that -[a]ttorney's fee
determinations . . . are `collateral to the main cause of
action' and `uniquely separable from the cause of action
to be proved at trial.'-  Landgraf v. USI Film Products,
511 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 33) (quoting White v. New
Hampshire Dept. of Employment Security, 455 U. S. 445,
451-452 (1982)).
  The dissent's perception that retroactive reopening
provisions are to be found all about us is perhaps
attributable to its inversion of the statutory presumption
regarding retroactivity.  Thus, it asserts that Rule 60(b)
must be retroactive, since -[n]ot a single word in its text
suggests that it does not apply to judgments entered
prior to its effective date.-  Post, at 12-13.  This
reverses the traditional rule, confirmed only last Term,
that statutes do not apply retroactively unless Congress
expressly states that they do.  See Landgraf, 511 U. S.,
at ___ (slip op., at 32-34).  The dissent adds that -the
traditional construction of remedial measures . . .
support[s] construing [Rule 60(b)] to apply to past as
well as future judgments.-  Post, at 13.  But reliance on
the vaguely remedial purpose of a statute to defeat the
presumption against retroactivity was rejected in the
companion cases of Landgraf, see 511 U. S., at ___ (slip
op., at 40-42, n. 37) and Rivers v. Roadway Express, 511
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11-15).  Compare Landgraf,
511 U. S. at ___ (slip op., at 2-4) (Blackmun, J.,
dissenting) (-This presumption [against retroactive
legislation] need not be applied to remedial legislation
. . . .-) (citing Sampeyreac, 7 Pet., at 222).
  The dissent sets forth a number of hypothetical
horribles flowing from our assertedly -rigid holding--for
example, the inability to set aside a civil judgment that
has become final during a period when a natural
disaster prevented the timely filing of a certiorari
petition.  Post, at 18.  That is horrible not because of
our holding, but because the underlying statute itself
enacts a -rigid- jurisdictional bar to entertaining un-
timely civil petitions.  Congress could undoubtedly enact
prospective legislation permitting, or indeed requiring,
this Court to make equitable exceptions to an otherwise
applicable rule of finality, just as district courts do
pursuant to Rule 60(b).  It is no indication whatever of
the invalidity of the constitutional rule which we
announce, that it produces unhappy consequences when
a legislature lacks foresight, and acts belatedly to
remedy a deficiency in the law.  That is a routine result
of constitutional rules.  See, e.g., Collins v. Youngblood,
497 U. S. 37 (1990) (Ex Post Facto Clause precludes
post-offense statutory extension of a criminal sentence);
United States Trust Co. of N. Y. v. New Jersey, 431
U. S. 1 (1977) (Contract Clause prevents retroactive
alteration of contract with state bondholders); Louisville
Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford, 295 U. S. 555,
589-590, 601-602 (1935) (Takings Clause invalidates a
bankruptcy law that abrogates a vested property inter-
est).  See also United States v. Security Industrial Bank,
459 U. S. 70, 78 (1982).
  Finally, we may respond to the suggestion of the
concurrence that this case should be decided more
narrowly.  The concurrence is willing to acknowledge
only that -sometimes Congress lacks the power under
Article I to reopen an otherwise closed court judgment,-
post, at 1.  In the present context, what it considers
critical is that 27A(b) is -exclusively retroactive- and
-appli[es] to a limited number of individuals.-  Ibid.  If
Congress had only -provid[ed] some of the assurances
against `singling out' that ordinary legislative activity
normally provides-say, prospectivity and general
applicability-we might have a different case.-  Post, at
3.
  This seems to us wrong in both fact and law.  In
point of fact, 27A(b) does not -single out- any defendant
for adverse treatment (or any plaintiff for favorable
treatment).  Rather, it identifies a class of actions (those
filed pre-Lampf, timely under applicable state law, but
dismissed as time barred post-Lampf) which embraces
many plaintiffs and defendants, the precise number and
identities of whom we even now do not know.  The
concurrence's contention that the number of covered
defendants -is too small (compared with the number of
similar, uncovered firms) to distinguish meaningfully the
law before us from a similar law aimed at a single
closed case,- post, at 4 (emphasis added), renders the
concept of -singling out- meaningless.
  More importantly, however, the concurrence's point
seems to us wrong in law.  To be sure, the class of
actions identified by 27A(b) could have been more
expansive (e.g., all actions that were or could have been
filed pre-Lampf) and the provision could have been
written to have prospective as well as retroactive effect
(e.g., -all post-Lampf dismissed actions, plus all future
actions under Rule 10b-5, shall be timely if brought
within 30 years of the injury-).  But it escapes us how
this could in any way cause the statute to be any less
an infringement upon the judicial power.  The nub of
that infringement consists not of the Legislature's acting
in a particularized and hence (according to the concur-
rence) nonlegislative fashion; but rather of the
Legislature's nullifying prior, authoritative judicial
action.  It makes no difference whatever to that separa-
tion-of-powers violation that it is in gross rather than
particularized (e.g., -we hereby set aside all hitherto
entered judicial orders-), or that it is not accompanied
by an -almost- violation of the Bill of Attainder Clause,
or an -almost- violation of any other constitutional
provision.
  Ultimately, the concurrence agrees with our judgment
only -[b]ecause the law before us embodies risks of the
very sort that our Constitution's `separation of powers'
prohibition seeks to avoid.-  Post, at 7.  But the doctrine
of separation of powers is a structural safeguard rather
than a remedy to be applied only when specific harm, or
risk of specific harm, can be identified.  In its major
features (of which the conclusiveness of judicial judg-
ments is assuredly one) it is a prophylactic device,
establishing high walls and clear distinctions because
low walls and vague distinctions will not be judicially
defensible in the heat of interbranch conflict.  It is
interesting that the concurrence quotes twice, and cites
without quotation a third time, the opinion of Justice
Powell in INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S., at 959.  But
Justice Powell wrote only for himself in that case.  He
alone expressed dismay that -[t]he Court's decision . . .
apparently will invalidate every use of the legislative
veto,- and opined that -[t]he breadth of this holding
gives one pause.-  Ibid.  It did not give pause to the six-
Justice majority, which put an end to the long-simmer-
ing interbranch dispute that would otherwise have been
indefinitely prolonged.  We think legislated invalidation
of judicial judgments deserves the same categorical
treatment accorded by Chadha to congressional invalida-
tion of executive action.  The delphic alternative sug-
gested by the concurrence (the setting aside of judg-
ments is all right so long as Congress does not
-impermissibly tr[y] to apply, as well as make, the law,-
post, at 1) simply prolongs doubt and multiplies confron-
tation.  Separation of powers, a distinctively American
political doctrine, profits from the advice authored by a
distinctively American poet: Good fences make good
neighbors.

                       *    *    *
   We know of no previous instance in which Congress
has enacted retroactive legislation requiring an Article
III court to set aside a final judgment, and for good
reason.  The Constitution's separation of legislative and
judicial powers denies it the authority to do so.  Section
27A(b) is unconstitutional to the extent that it requires
federal courts to reopen final judgments entered before
its enactment.  The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
affirmed.
                                      It is so ordered.