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Page Number: 12.0

Cite as:  588 U. S. ____ (2019) 

7 

Opinion of the Court 

resolution  through  the  judicial  process.”    Flast  v.  Cohen, 
392  U. S.  83,  95  (1968).    In  these  cases  we  are  asked  to 
decide  an  important  question  of  constitutional  law.    “But 
before we do so, we must find that the question is presented 
in  a  ‘case’  or  ‘controversy’  that  is,  in  James  Madison’s
words, ‘of a Judiciary Nature.’ ”  DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. 
Cuno, 547 U. S. 332, 342 (2006) (quoting 2 Records of the 
Federal Convention of 1787, p. 430 (M. Farrand ed. 1966)). 
Chief  Justice  Marshall  famously  wrote  that  it  is  “the 
province  and  duty  of  the  judicial  department  to  say  what
the  law  is.”  Marbury  v.  Madison,  1  Cranch  137,  177 
(1803).  Sometimes, however, “the law is that the judicial 
department  has  no  business  entertaining  the  claim  of 
unlawfulness—because the question is entrusted to one of
the political branches or involves no judicially enforceable
rights.”  Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U. S. 267, 277 (2004) (plu-
rality opinion).  In such a case the claim is said to present 
a “political question” and to be nonjusticiable—outside the 
courts’ competence and therefore beyond the courts’ juris-
diction.  Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 217 (1962).  Among 
the  political  question  cases  the  Court  has  identified  are 
those  that  lack  “judicially  discoverable  and  manageable 
standards for resolving [them].”  Ibid. 

Last Term in Gill v. Whitford, we reviewed our partisan 
gerrymandering  cases  and  concluded  that  those  cases 
“leave  unresolved  whether  such  claims  may  be  brought.” 
585 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 13).  This Court’s authority to 
act, as we said in Gill, is “grounded in and limited by the
necessity  of  resolving,  according  to  legal  principles,  a
plaintiff ’s  particular  claim  of  legal  right.” 
Ibid.    The  
question here is whether there is an “appropriate role for 
the Federal Judiciary” in remedying the problem of parti-
san  gerrymandering—whether  such  claims  are  claims  of 
legal  right,  resolvable  according  to  legal  principles,  or 
political  questions  that  must  find  their  resolution  else-
where.  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8).