Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc.

Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 30, 1994 Decided April 18, 1995
Full case name	Ed Plaut, et ux., et al., petitioners v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., et al.
Citations	514 U.S. 211 (more) 115 S. Ct. 1447; 131 L. Ed. 2d 328; 1995 U.S. LEXIS 2843
Case history
Prior	789 F. Supp. 231 (E.D. Ky. 1992), affirmed, 1 F.3d 1487 (6th Cir. 1993); cert. granted, 511 U.S. 1141 (1994).
Questions presented
Did Congress violate separation of powers by requiring federal courts reopen settled cases as part of the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991?
Holding
A statute that requires federal courts to reopen final judgments entered before its enactment is unconstitutional because it violates the notion of separation of powers.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Scalia, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas
Concurrence	Breyer
Dissent	Stevens, joined by Ginsburg
Laws applied
U.S. Const. art. III

Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211 (1995), was a landmark case about separation of powers in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Congress may not retroactively require federal courts to reopen final judgments.^[1] Writing for the Court, Justice Scalia asserted that such action amounted to an unauthorized encroachment by Congress upon the powers of the judiciary and therefore violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers.^[2]