Giving makebelieve the force of law is what SCOTUS does best
https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/giving-makebelieve-force-of-law/
Alternet seems to be misrepresenting how the US court system works with this article.
Firstly, remember that it wasn't just a Supreme Court ruling. Court after court considered this case and they all considered it to be legit. This wasn't something the SCOTUS just made up.
But to explain it, the petitioner asked for a ruling about a law that was going to be applied at some point. It doesn't matter that the law had not yet been applied, or that nobody had made the request, as per the rules about the court system, it is sufficient that the application of law was going to happen at some point.
So these articles think they have uncovered something when really, yeah, that's just how the federal courts work. There's no gotcha here.
Nope. SCOTUS applies standard rules of federal courts, as it did here. And it explained that at length in the ruling, as did the lower courts that also explained at length how this legal process works.
@volkris "Can" and "should" are two very different things. Is "Lawful but awful" the standard SCOTUS aims to embody? Seems that way to me.