Page:Ivan Eberhart v. United States.pdf/4

4 "the first date set for the meeting of creditors"). Fed. Rule Bkrtcy. Proc. 4004(a). If a creditor so moves, "the court may for cause extend the time to file a complaint objecting to discharge." Rule 4004(b). And using language almost identical to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 45(b)(2)'s admonition that "[t]he court may not extend the time to take any action under Rules 29, 33, 34, and 35, except as stated in those rules," Bankruptcy Rule 9006(b)(3) states that "[t]he court may enlarge the time for taking action under Rules 1006(b)(2), 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. Nothing 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