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Page Number: 50

12 

MOORE v. HARPER 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

a  particular  legislative  Act,  which  Harper  I  supposedly
made inoperative, will again be “operative” or “effective” as 
a  state  statute.  Ante,  at  7–8  (internal  quotation  marks 
omitted).

This reasoning bears no connection to the judicial power
of this Court or the court below.  Judicial power is the power
to adjudicate “definite and concrete” disputes “touching the
legal  relations  of  parties  having  adverse  legal  interests,” 
Rice, 404 U. S., at 246 (internal quotation marks omitted),
by “determin[ing] the respective rights and liabilities or du-
ties” of the parties before a court in a particular case, Ni-
cholson  v. State  Ed.  Assistance  Auth.,  275  N. C.  439,  447, 
168 S. E. 2d 401, 406 (1969).  Thus, a judgment binds the 
rights of the parties in that case, see Taylor, 553 U. S., at 
892–893, and it awards remedies that “operate with respect 
to [those] specific parties,” California, 593 U. S., at ___ (slip
op., at 8) (internal quotation marks omitted).  In deciding
any case, the court must “ascertai[n] and declar[e] the law
applicable  to  the  controversy”;  this  duty,  in  turn,  implies
“the negative power to disregard an unconstitutional enact-
ment” in deciding the case.  Massachusetts v.  Mellon, 262 
U. S. 447, 488 (1923); accord, Nicholson, 275 N. C., at 447, 
168  S. E.  2d,  at  406;  Marbury  v.  Madison,  1  Cranch  137, 
176–178 (1803).  But this negative power of judicial review
is not a “power per se to review and annul acts of [legisla-
tion] on the ground that they are unconstitutional,” Mellon, 
262 U. S., at 488; “to change or to repeal statutes,” Person 
v. Doughton, 186 N. C. 723, 725, 120 S. E. 481, 483 (1923); 
or  to  issue  orders  that  “operate  on  legal  rules  in  the  ab-
stract,” California, 593 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8) (internal 
quotation marks omitted).  Courts of law simply do not ren-
der “judgments” that toggle statutes from “operative” to “in-
operative” and back again, as if judicial review were some 
sort of in rem jurisdiction over legislative Acts. 

Indeed, such a conception would contradict the most basic