Re:U.S. Supreme Court endorses gay, transgender worker prote...
by pc86 on Monday June 15, 2020 @11:52AM
(#23528732)
It's not that it's more difficult to do, it's that you generally don't do it. SCOTUS in particular will not respond to, mention, or address anything even approaching a hypothetical scenario, which is sometimes frustrating when the specifics of a case aren't just ride for larger sweeping changes that society may want. You'll often hear of proponents of one reform or another saying that a given case is perfect for SCOTUS because it lines up very closely with their policy objectives.
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Re:U.S. Supreme Court endorses gay, transgender worker prote...
by rodw on Monday June 15, 2020 @11:58AM
(#23528807)
I don't have an example off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure I've seen arguments presented to the SCOTUS that are absolutely based on hypotheticals, including hypotheticals introduced by the justices themselves.
EDIT: Here's a very recent one: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/supreme-court-justice-s-co...
Re:U.S. Supreme Court endorses gay, transgender worker prote...
by pc86 on Monday June 15, 2020 @12:07PM
(#23528914)
Yes the justices ask questions around hypotheticals and can ask the attorneys to make arguments based on hypothetical situations the justices present, but they hear only specific cases, not hypothetical ones, and the decisions refer to the specifics of the attorneys' arguments and the case law only.
Re:U.S. Supreme Court endorses gay, transgender worker prote...
by rodw on Monday June 15, 2020 @12:25PM
(#23529142)
Of course. There's no court case that is based entirely on a hypothetical. But it seems exceedingly common - especially on the scale of SCOTUS - to abstract a specific event or argument to the more general one.
Take constitutional challenge to Obamacare for example. I assume they had to point to someone specific and say "this law violates that person's rights", but they absolutely "considered" and "responded to" the hypothetical in that case.