In the 1992 case of United States v. Alvin J. Dixon and Michael Foster, the U.S Supreme Court examined whether prosecution for a crime after disciplinary proceedings for the same offense violated the Double Jeopardy Clause of Fifth Amendment, which protects against multiple punishments or prosecutions for a single offense. The defendants had been subjected to both criminal charges and school disciplinary actions due to drug-related activities on school grounds. They argued that this constituted double jeopardy as they were being punished twice for one offence. However, in its ruling, the court held that separate sovereigns (in this case, an educational institution and federal government) could each prosecute individuals without violating double jeopardy protections because these entities derive their authority from different sources - one from state law governing schools and another from federal criminal statutes.

In the dissenting opinion for United States v. Dixon and Foster, Justice Blackmun argued that the majority's decision to overrule Grady v. Tennessee was unnecessary and inappropriate. He contended that Grady provided a clear rule which protected defendants from successive prosecutions for the same conduct, while still allowing flexibility in its application by lower courts. The justice believed that this case could have been resolved under existing precedent without overturning Grady, as neither Dixon nor Foster were being prosecuted twice for exactly the same behavior or actions; rather they were facing prosecution for different criminal acts arising out of a single course of conduct - something not prohibited by Double Jeopardy Clause according to his interpretation of it. Furthermore, he criticized the majority’s adoption of Blockburger test as an exclusive criterion because it failed to fully protect against double jeopardy abuses since it only looked at statutory elements instead of actual evidence presented at trial.