text: 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 (which are amended according to the times and technology) 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.
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