Consent decree
A consent decree is an agreement or settlement that resolves a dispute between two parties without admission of guilt or liability. Most often it is such a type of settlement in the United States. The plaintiff and the defendant ask the court to enter into their agreement, and the court maintains supervision over the implementation of the decree in monetary exchanges or restructured interactions between parties. It is similar to and sometimes referred to as an antitrust decree, stipulated judgment, or consent judgment. Consent decrees are frequently used by federal courts to ensure that businesses and industries adhere to regulatory laws in areas such as antitrust law, employment discrimination, and environmental regulation.
Legal process
The process of introducing a consent decree begins with negotiation. One of three things happens: a lawsuit is filed and the parties concerned reach an agreement prior to adjudication of the contested issues; a lawsuit is filed and actively contested, and the parties reach an agreement after the court has ruled on some issues; or the parties settle their dispute prior to the filing of a lawsuit and they simultaneously file a lawsuit and request that the court agree to the entry of judgment. The court is meant to turn this agreement into a judicial decree. In many cases, the request for entry of a consent decree prompts judges to sign the documents presented then and there. In some cases, however, such as criminal cases, the judge must make some sorts of assessments before the court's entry of the agreement as a consent decree.The usual consent decree is not self-executing. A consent decree is implemented when the parties transform their agreements from paper to reality. The judge who signed the decree may have no involvement or may monitor the implementation. The judge can only step in to assist in enforcement if a party complains to the court that an opponent has failed to perform as agreed. In this case, the offending party would be committed for contempt.
Decrees by consent are more binding than those issued in invitum, or against an unwilling party, which are subject to modification by the same court, and reversal by higher courts. The decree issued by consent cannot be modified, except by consent. If the decree was obtained by means of fraud or given by mistake, it may be set aside by a court. Errors of law or of inferences from the facts may invalidate it completely.
Typically, a consent decree dispenses with the necessity of having proof in court, since by definition the defendant agrees to the order. Thus, the use of a consent decree does not involve a sentence or an admission of guilt. Likewise, the consent decree prevents a finding of facts, so the decree cannot be pleaded as Res judicata.
History
Because judicial decrees are part of government civil enforcement in settlements that two parties typically agree to before litigation is filed, they act as a hybrid between a judicial order and a settlement without a party conceding criminal responsibility.Frederick Pollock and Frederic Maitland describe how courts during the 12th century of Medieval Europe used "fines" as a form of court orders to settle land disputes among litigants with the punitive power and legitimacy of courts through the use of consent decree. In the United States, 19th and 20th century legal treatises show that consent decrees and the role of the court in the parties' settlement was ambiguous. The 1947 Corpus Juris Secundum declares that although consent decrees are "not the judgment of the court", they do have the "force and effect of a judgment".
Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which both went into effect in 1938, lay many of the legal foundations that govern the use of consent decrees. Creating space for courts, which are important actors in implementing a consent decree, to enter into a settlement, Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure gives federal district courts the power to approve class action settlements as long as they are "fair, reasonable, and adequate". Rule 54 defines judgment, which refers to consent decree, and allows the court to "direct entry of a final judgment" when multiple parties are involved, and Rule 58 describes the procedure of how parties may enter judgment. Additionally, Rule 60 describes conditions under which parties can be granted "relief from a judgment or order". As Rule 48 in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure stipulates that dismissals in criminal cases may not occur without "leave of court", Rule 41 allows, if all the parties agree, the court to dismiss any suit besides class action suits, shareholder derivative suits, or bankruptcy action. Many of these rules create the space for consent decree by establishing the role of judges within the settlement of two parties.Precedents
Many of the early court cases involving consent decree set precedents for the roles that judges would play in the negotiating, approving, interpreting, and modifying a settlement between two parties. The role of the judge in regard to consent decree wavers between "rubber stamping" versus applying their own judgments to a proposed settlement. In 1879, Pacific Railroad of Missouri v. Ketchum bound the court's role in consent decrees to simply supporting to an agreement that parties have already established on their own. In regard to antitrust decrees, the first consent decree used in antitrust regulation under the Sherman Antitrust Act was Swift & Co. v. United States. With Swift & Co. v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a consent decree could be modified or terminated only when new developments over time bring out a "grievous wrong" in how the ruling of the consent decree affects the parties of the suit. The Supreme Court supported this limited flexibility of consent decrees in United States v. Terminal Railroad Association: " decree will not be expanded by implication or intendment beyond the meaning of its terms when read in the light of the issues and the purposes for which the suit was brought."In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corp., that to promote finality, a court's changes to consent a decree should be rare—but the courts can modify a consent decree or frame injunctive relief to ensure the litigation achieves its purpose. Before a judge can enter a consent decree, according to the rulings in Firefighters v. City of Cleveland and Firefighters v. Stotts they must have subject-matter jurisdiction, and they cannot modify a consent decree when one of the parties objects. The Supreme Court's position on how much authority a judge possesses in regard to influencing how the settlement is agreed upon is conflicting. In Firefighters v. City of Cleveland, the Supreme Court ruled that consent decrees "have attributes both of contracts and of judicial decrees", so consent decrees should be treated differently for different purposes. In Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail, the Supreme Court decided that courts could take into account the changing times and circumstances for more flexibility in the administration of consent decrees.
In regard to litigation in performance rights organizations such as American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music, Inc. in United States v. ASCAP, which began in 1941, the Department of Justice used consent decrees to regulate how they issued blanket licenses to ensure that trade is not restrained and that the prices of licenses would not be competitive. The Department of Justice reviewed the music consent decrees starting 2019, and issued a statement in January 2021 that they would not be terminating them as they still offered several efficiencies in music licensing that maintained benefits to the artists.