546US1
16
Unit: $$U4
[08-22-08 13:34:13] PAGES PGT: OPIN
EBERHART v. UNITED STATES Per Curiam
1017(e), 3002(c), 4003(b), 4004(a), 4007(c), 8002, and 9033, only to the extent and under the conditions stated in those rules.” It is implausible that the Rules considered in Kontrick can be nonjurisdictional claim-processing rules, while virtually identical provisions of the Rules of Criminal Procedure can deprive federal courts of subject-matter jurisdiction. Noth ing in Rules 33 or 45 or our cases requires such a dissonance. Moreover, our most recent decisions have attempted to brush away confusion introduced by our earlier opinions. “Clarity would be facilitated,” we have said, “if courts and litigants used the label ‘ jurisdictional’ not for claim processing rules, but only for prescriptions delineating the classes of cases (subject-matter jurisdiction) and the persons (personal jurisdiction) falling within a court’s adjudicatory authority.” Kontrick, 540 U. S., at 455. We break no new ground in firmly classifying Rules 33 and 45 as claim processing rules, despite the confusion generated by the “less than meticulous” uses of the term “jurisdictional” in our earlier cases. Id., at 454. The Seventh Circuit correctly identified our decisions in Smith and Robinson as the source of the confusion. 388 F. 3d, at 1049. Since we have not “expressly overruled” them, it held, petitioner’s appeal had to be dismissed. Ibid. Those cases, however, do not hold the limits of the Rules to be jurisdictional in the proper sense that Kontrick describes. See 540 U. S., at 455. We need not overrule Robinson or Smith to characterize Rules 33 and 45 as claim-processing rules. In Smith, the District Judge rejected a Rule 33 motion for a new trial, and the conviction was affirmed on appeal. 331 U. S., at 470. After the defendant was taken into custody, the District Judge changed his mind. Purporting to act under the authority of Rule 33, he issued an order vacating his earlier judgment and granting a new trial. Id., at 471. Although we observed in a footnote that “[t]he policy of the Rules was not to extend power indefinitely but to confine
