Donziger v. United States

Cite as: 598 U. S. ____ (2023) 1
Statement
GORSUCH, of ORSUCH, J.
J.,Gdissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
STEVEN DONZIGER v. UNITED STATES
ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED
STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT
No. 22–274. Decided March 27, 2023
The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.
JUSTICE GORSUCH, with whom JUSTICE KAVANAUGH
joins, dissenting from the denial of certiorari.
For decades, Texaco, a corporate predecessor to Chevron,
allegedly polluted rain forests and rivers in South America.
See Aguinda v. Texaco, Inc., 303 F. 3d 470, 473 (CA2 2002).
In 1993, residents of Ecuador came to court seeking relief
for personal and environmental injuries they said the com-
pany had caused. Represented by Steven Donziger, the
plaintiffs filed a class-action suit in the Southern District of
New York. Id., at 473–474. At the company’s insistence,
the court transferred the litigation to Ecuador. See Repub-
lic of Ecuador v. Chevron Corp., 638 F. 3d 384, 389–390
(CA2 2011). Later, Chevron came to regret that move. Af-
ter trial, it found itself on the wrong end of an $8.6 billion
judgment. Id., at 391.
Returning to the Southern District of New York, the com-
pany launched a counteroffensive. Ultimately, it won not
only an injunction against the enforcement of the Ecuado-
rian judgment in any court in the United States. See Chev-
ron Corp. v. Donziger, 833 F. 3d 74, 80 (CA2 2016). It also
won a constructive trust on all assets Mr. Donziger received
in this or any country as a result of the Ecuadorian judg-
ment. Ibid. To enforce that trust, the district court granted
Chevron discovery into Mr. Donziger’s holdings and ordered
him to surrender all of his electronic devices for forensic im-
aging. See 2021 WL 1845104, *1 (SDNY, May 7, 2021).
When Mr. Donziger failed to comply fully with the court’s
2 DONZIGER v. UNITED STATES
Statement
GORSUCH, of ORSUCH, J.
J.,Gdissenting
orders, it held him in criminal contempt and referred the
matter to the U. S. Attorney’s Office for prosecution. See 38
F. 4th 290, 295 (CA2 2022). After some deliberation, how-
ever, the U. S. Attorney “ ‘respectfully declined’ ” to take up
the case. Ibid. (alteration omitted).
Apparently displeased with this decision, the district
court responded by setting up and staffing its own prosecu-
tor’s office. Ibid. In the bench trial that followed, that office
secured a conviction and the court sentenced Mr. Donziger
to six months in prison. Ibid. Throughout these proceed-
ings and on appeal, Mr. Donziger objected. He argued that
the district court had no lawful authority to override the
Executive Branch’s nonprosecution decision and that our
Constitution’s separation of powers exists in no small meas-
ure to keep courts from becoming partisans in the cases be-
fore them. Despite his arguments, the Second Circuit af-
firmed Mr. Donziger’s conviction. Id., at 306. Judge
Menashi dissented. Id., at 306–315.
Today, the Court denies Mr. Donziger’s petition seeking
review of the Second Circuit’s decision. I would grant it. In
Young v. United States ex rel. Vuitton et Fils S. A., 481 U. S.
787 (1987), this Court approved the use of court-appointed
prosecutors as a “last resort” in certain criminal contempt
cases. Id., at 801. But that decision has met with consid-
erable criticism. As Members of this Court have put it, the
Constitution gives courts the power to “serve as a neutral
adjudicator in a criminal case,” not “the power to prosecute
crimes.” Id., at 816 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment).
The Second Circuit acknowledged, too, that Young stands
in considerable “tension” with this Court’s subsequent
separation-of-powers decisions. 38 F. 4th, at 303; see, e.g.,
Collins v. Yellen, 594 U. S. ___ (2021); United States v. Ar-
threx, Inc., 594 U. S. ___ (2021); Seila Law LLC v. Con-
sumer Financial Protection Bureau, 591 U. S. ___ (2020);
Lucia v. SEC, 585 U. S. ___ (2018).
Even taking Young on its own terms, it is hard to see how
Cite as: 598 U. S. ____ (2023) 3
Statement
GORSUCH, of ORSUCH, J.
J.,Gdissenting
that decision could justify what happened here. Young
rested on the premise that the court-appointed prosecutors
in that case wielded judicial power, meaning they were sub-
ject to judicial, not executive, supervision. See 481 U. S., at795–796. By contrast, “[e]very court and every party” has
acknowledged that the court-appointed prosecutors in this
case did not exercise judicial power. 38 F. 4th, at 306
(Menashi, J., dissenting). Instead, all agree, the court-ap-
pointed prosecutors here exercised “executive power” and
were accountable through the Executive Branch’s chain of
command running ultimately to the President. Id., at 306–
307 (emphasis added). By its own terms, then, Young
simply does not speak to Mr. Donziger’s situation.
Nor without Young is it clear what legal principle could
sustain Mr. Donziger’s conviction. Highlighting the con-
fused (but surely executive) nature of the prosecution in
this case, the “United States” supplied the Second Circuit
with two different briefs offering different theories. One
brief came from the court-appointed prosecutors, another
from lawyers within the Department of Justice.
Adopting one of the court-appointed prosecutors’ theo-
ries, the Second Circuit reasoned that those who prosecuted
Mr. Donziger served as properly appointed “inferior offic-
ers” of the United States within the Executive Branch. 38
F. 4th, at 296–299. But under the Constitution’s Appoint-
ments Clause, “Courts of Law” may appoint inferior officers
only when “Congress . . . by Law vest[s]” them with that au-
thority. Art. II, §2, cl. 2. All of which raises the question:
Exactly what law gives federal district courts the extraor-
dinary power to appoint inferior executive officers to serve
as prosecutors in proceedings before them?
The Second Circuit pointed to Federal Rule of Criminal
Procedure 42. That submission, however, faces at least two
challenges. First, in Young this Court rejected the notion
that the then-existing version of Rule 42 could serve as an
independent font of appointment authority. 481 U. S., at
4 DONZIGER v. UNITED STATES
Statement
GORSUCH, of ORSUCH, J.
J.,Gdissenting
794; see id., at 815, n. 1 (opinion of Scalia, J.). After all, “it
is a Rule of court rather than an enactment of Congress,”
and therefore it cannot “confer Article II appointment au-
thority” on anybody. Id., at 816, n. 1. Second, courts have
adopted Rule 42 under the Rules Enabling Act. That stat-
ute provides that any rules of court promulgated under its
terms “shall not abridge . . . or modify any substantive
right.” 28 U. S. C. §2072(b). Yet, the manner in which the
Second Circuit applied Rule 42 had just that impermissible
effect. The “decision of a prosecutor . . . not to indict” is one
that belongs squarely within “the special province of the Ex-
ecutive Branch.” Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U. S. 821, 832
(1985) (emphasis added). This “structural principl[e]”
serves to “protect the individual” just as much as the Exec-
utive Branch. Bond v. United States, 564 U. S. 211, 222
(2011). By interpreting Rule 42 as authorizing courts to
make their own decision to initiate a prosecution—and even
to override a contrary decision by the Executive Branch—
the Second Circuit’s opinion not only arrogated a power to
the Judiciary that belongs elsewhere. It allowed the district
court to assume the “dual position as accuser and deci-
sionmaker”—a combination that “violat[es the] due pro-
cess” rights of the accused. Williams v. Pennsylvania, 579
U. S. 1, 9 (2016).
Seeking to avoid these problems, lawyers from the De-
partment of Justice advanced other theories in their own
brief before the Second Circuit. Most pertinently, they sug-
gested that the court-appointed prosecutors did not serve
as inferior officers for purposes of the Appointments Clause;
instead, they served only as nonofficer employees in the Ex-
ecutive Branch. But not only is this position inconsistent
with how the Second Circuit viewed the matter. See 38
F. 4th, at 299. It is hard to square with our own precedent.
See Morrison v. Olson, 487 U. S. 654, 670–671 (1988) (hold-
ing an independent counsel to be an inferior officer). And
even overlooking all that, the notion that the Constitution
Cite as: 598 U. S. ____ (2023) 5
Statement
GORSUCH, of ORSUCH, J.
J.,Gdissenting
allows one branch to install nonofficer employees in another
branch would come as a surprise to many. Who really
thinks that the President may choose law clerks for my col-
leagues, that we can pick White House staff for him, or that
either he or we are entitled to select aides for the Speaker
of the House?
However much the district court may have thought Mr.
Donziger warranted punishment, the prosecution in this
case broke a basic constitutional promise essential to our
liberty. In this country, judges have no more power to ini-
tiate a prosecution of those who come before them than
prosecutors have to sit in judgment of those they charge. In
the name of the “United States,” two different groups of
prosecutors have asked us to turn a blind eye to this prom-
ise. Respectfully, I would not. With this Court’s failure to
intervene today, I can only hope that future courts weighing
whether to appoint their own prosecutors will consider
carefully Judge Menashi’s dissenting opinion in this case,
the continuing vitality of Young, and the limits of its rea-
soning. Our Constitution does not tolerate what happened
here.