(06-29-2023 11:34 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(06-29-2023 11:10 AM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(06-29-2023 10:21 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  But, I am a little disappointed this was a 6-3 decision. I cant fathom a Justice saying that the sole arbiter of Elections in a state is the state legislature all by its lonesome. Again, that seems wholly against the concept that I understand federalism to be.

The dissent didn't say that. In a nutshell, the dissent said that the case was moot for a technical reason, and thus the Supreme Court shouldn't decide it.

Regarding the dissent - if those 3 Justices felt that way, why was the decision 6-3? Shouldn't that be 6-0 with 3 essentially abstaining?

A reasonable question, but there's more to it than that. Mootness and ripeness are actually fundamental principles of the Court's jurisdiction, in that the Court's authority only extends to actual "cases and controversies"; it does not have authority to issue advisory opinions (this is in contrast to most of the Constitutional Courts set up in continental Europe after WW2, which typically are explicitly endowed with advisory authority). In dissenting based on mootness, the Justices are not just saying "we personally don't care about this case"; they are saying that the principle of mootness forbids the Court from deciding the case either way, and they very much care that this principle be upheld.