Thomas, J., dissenting
be it through the denial of a fundamentally fair judicial procedure or through the application of a rule of decision that itself violates due process—the remedy that Congress has provided is appellate “review of the [challenged] judgmen[t] in this Court.” Feldman, 460 U. S., at 482; see, e.g., Rogers, 532 U. S., at 453; Bouie, 378 U. S., at 349; Brinkerhoff-Faris, 281 U. S., at 678; cf. Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection, 560 U. S. 702 (2010) (reviewing judicial-taking claim on certiorari to the challenged state-court judgment). But, if that remedy proves unsuccessful—as it did for Reed—the aggrieved party cannot simply substitute an executive officer as a defendant, charge the state court’s errors to that officer, and seek redress for a court-inflicted injury in a purported original action.
Properly understood, therefore, Article III, the Rooker–Feldman doctrine, and procedural due process principles work in harmony. The majority’s piecemeal analysis replaces this natural coherence with chaos. It dilutes Article III’s traceability and redressability requirements to the point of irrelevance. It creates a system in which the same state-court actions simultaneously give rise to identical original and appellate claims for relief. See this Court’s Rule 13.3 (“[T]he time to file [a] petition for a writ of certiorari … runs from the date of the denial of rehearing” by the lower court). It allows Reed to convert his failed certiorari petition into a §1983 complaint. And, in doing so, it authorizes a proceeding in which the District Court can do nothing except opine on the constitutional merits of a state-court adjudication. *** If there is a mitigating factor to today’s decision, it is that the §1983 action that the Court misguidedly allows to proceed is no barrier to the prompt execution of Reed’s lawful sentence. See Hill v. McDonough, 547 U. S. 573, 583–584
