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4  CAMERON v. EMW WOMEN’S SURGICAL CENTER, P. S. C. 

KAGAN, J., concurring in judgment 

banc or Supreme Court review—that the (now new) attor-
ney  general  had  an  urgent reason  to  rejoin  the suit:  If  he 
did not, the law would be invalidated.  The motion to inter-
vene, then, was not an attempt to escape the consequences 
of failing to adhere to appellate deadlines, as in the hypo-
thetical offered above.  The motion was instead a response 
to a major shift in the litigation, creating a new demand for 
the  attorney  general’s  participation.    And  that  real-world 
fact answers EMW’s argument.  Granting the motion would 
not countenance an end-run around the timely-appeal rule 
by giving the attorney general a do-over.  It would simply 
recognize that only after the time for appeal had come and 
gone had a need arisen for the attorney general to reenter 
the suit. 

II 
  With  that  threshold  objection  answered,  the  issue  be-
comes how the factors bearing on intervention motions play 
out.  I agree with much of what the Court says on that issue 
(and  also  with  its  view  that  the  attorney  general’s  agree-
ment did not preclude his intervention).  But I see no reason 
to cast the analysis, even partially, in constitutional terms.  
See ante, at 7–9.  Our longstanding practice is to avoid un-
necessary discussion of constitutional questions.  See, e.g., 
Ashwander  v.  TVA,  297  U. S.  288,  345–348  (1936) 
(Brandeis, J., concurring).  And contra the majority, no in-
vocation of, or lofty observations about, the Constitution are 
here  needed.    The  considerations  governing  intervention 
motions—applying  equivalently  to  any  person  seeking  to 
intervene,  including  the  attorney  general—show  why  the 
Sixth Circuit went wrong in closing off the suit.  See gener-
ally Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 24. 
  Most  fundamentally,  the  attorney  general  had  a  strong 
reason for intervening.  Once again, the secretary had de-
fended the challenged law as constitutional until the Sixth