In Ex parte Bakelite Corp., 279 U.S. 438, 49 S.Ct. 411, 73 L.Ed. 789, and Williams v. United States, 289 U.S. 553, 53 S.Ct. 751, 77 L.Ed. 1372, this Court held that the United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the United States Court of Claims were neither confined in jurisdiction nor protected in independency by Article III of the Constitution, but that both had been created by virtue of other, substantive, powers possessed by Congress under Article I. The Congress has since pronounced its disagreement by providing as to each that 'such court is hereby declared to be a court established under article III of the Constitution of the United States.' The petitioners in these cases invite us to reaffirm the authority of our earlier decisions, and thus hold for naught these congressional pronouncements, at least as sought to be applied to judges appointed prior to their enactment.
No. 242 is a suit brought by individual employees in a New York state court to recover damages for breach of a collective bargaining agreement, and removed to the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York by the defendant employer on the ground of diversity of citizenship. The employees' right to recover was sustained by a divided panel of the Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Judge J. Warren Madden, then an active judge of the Court of Claims sitting by designation of the Chief Justice of the United States under 28 U.S.C. § 293(a), 28 U.S.C.A. § 293(a). No. 481 is a criminal prosecution instituted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and resulting in a conviction for armed robbery. The trial was presided over by Judge Joseph R. Jackson, a retired judge of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals sitting by similar designation. The petitioner's application for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals in forma pauperis, respecting the validity of this designation and alleged trial error, was upheld by this Court last Term, 366 U.S. 712, 81 S.Ct. 1229, 6 L.Ed.2d 845; we are now asked to review the Court of Appeals' affirmance of his conviction. Because of the significance of the 'designation' issue for the federal judicial system, we granted certiorari in the two cases, 368 U.S. 814, 815, 82 S.Ct. 56, 110, 7 L.Ed.2d 22, 23, limited to the question whether the judgment in either was vitiated by the respective participation of the judges named.
The claim advanced by the petitioners, that they were denied the protection of judges with tenure and compensation guaranteed by Article III, has nothing to do with the manner in which either of these judges conducted himself in these proceedings. No contention is made that either Judge Madden or Judge Jackson displayed a lack of appropriate judicial independence, or that either sought by his rulings to curry favor with Congress or the Executive. Both indeed enjoy statutory assurance of tenure and compensation, and were it not for the explicit provisions of Article III we should be quite unable to say that either judge's participation even colorably denied the petitioners independent judicial hearings.
Article III, § 1, however, is explicit and gives the petitioners a basis for complaint without requiring them to point to particular instances of mistreatment in the record. It provides:
'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. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.'
Apart from this provision, it is settled that neither the tenure nor salary of federal officers is constitutionally protected from impairment by Congress. Crenshaw v. United States, 134 U.S. 99, 107-108, 10 S.Ct. 431, 433, 434, 33 L.Ed. 825; cf. Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 How. 402, 416-418, 13 L.Ed. 472. The statutory declaration, therefore, that the judges of these two courts should serve during good behavior and with undiminished salary, see note 5, supra, was ineffective to bind any subsequent Congress unless those judges were invested at appointment with the protections of Article III. United States v. Fisher, 109 U.S. 143, 145, 3 S.Ct. 154, 155, 27 L.Ed. 885; see McAllister v. United States, 141 U.S. 174, 186, 11 S.Ct. 949, 953, 35 L.Ed. 693. And the petitioners naturally point to the Bakelite and Williams cases, supra, as establishing that no such constitutional protection was in fact conferred.