Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 22

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

19 

Opinion of the Court 
Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

was not unanimous, the challenge fails.”53  Where does the 
convenient “state court” qualification come from?  Neither 
the Apodaca plurality nor the dissent included any limita-
tion like that—their opinions turned on the meaning of the
Sixth Amendment.  What the dissent characterizes as Apo-
daca’s  result  turns  out  to  be  nothing  more  than  Justice
Powell’s reasoning about dual-track incorporation dressed 
up to look like a logical proof. 

in 

the 

All of this does no more than highlight an old truth.  It is 
usually  a  judicial  decision’s  reasoning—its  ratio  de-
cidendi—that allows it to have life and effect in the dispo-
sition  of  future  cases.54  As  this  Court  has  repeatedly  ex-
plained 
context  of  summary  affirmances, 
“ ‘unexplicated’ ”  decisions  may  “ ‘settl[e]  the  issues  for  the 
parties, [but they are] not to be read as a renunciation by 
this  Court  of  doctrines  previously  announced  in  our  opin-
ions.’ ”55  Much the same may be said here.  Apodaca’s judg-
ment line resolved that case for the parties in that case.  It 
is binding in that sense.  But stripped from any reasoning, 
its judgment alone cannot be read to repudiate this Court’s 

—————— 

53 Ibid.  See also post, at 11, n. 6 (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part)
(offering the same argument by contending that “[t]he result of Apodaca” 
means “state criminal juries need not be unanimous”).

54 See J. Salmond, Jurisprudence §62, p. 191 (G. Williams ed., 10th ed. 
1947) (“The concrete decision is binding between the parties to it, but is
the abstract ratio decidendi which alone has the force of law as regards 
the world at large”); F. Schauer, Precedent, in Routledge Companion to
Philosophy of Law 129 (A. Marmor ed. 2012) (“[T]he traditional answer
to  the  question  of  what  is  a  precedent  is that  subsequent  cases  falling
within the ratio decidendi—or rationale—of the precedent case are con-
trolled by that case”); N. Duxbury, The Nature and Authority of Prece-
dent 65–66 (2008). 

55 Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U. S. 173, 176 (1977) (per curiam) (quoting 
Fusari v. Steinberg, 419 U. S. 379, 392 (1975) (Burger, C. J., concurring); 
see also Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 1001–1002 (1996) (THOMAS, J., con-
curring in judgment).