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Page Number: 54.0

8 

TRUMP v. HAWAII 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

authority of courts.  Id., at 711–717. 

This Court has long respected these traditional limits on 
equity  and  judicial  power.  See,  e.g.,  Scott  v.  Donald,  165 
U. S. 107, 115 (1897) (rejecting an injunction based on the
theory  that  the  plaintiff  “so  represents  [a]  class”  whose 
rights  were  infringed  by  a  statute  as  “too  conjectural  to
furnish a safe basis upon which a court of equity ought to
grant  an  injunction”).    Take,  for  example,  this  Court’s 
decision in Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447 (1923).
There,  a  taxpayer  sought  to  enjoin  the  enforcement  of  an
appropriation  statute.    The  Court  noted  that  this  kind  of 
dispute  “is  essentially  a  matter  of  public  and  not  of  indi-
vidual concern.”  Id., at 487.  A general interest in enjoin-
ing implementation of an illegal law, this Court explained, 
provides  “no  basis  . . .  for  an  appeal  to  the  preventive
powers of a court of equity.”  Ibid.  Courts can review the 
constitutionality  of  an  act  only  when  “a  justiciable  issue”
requires it to decide whether to “disregard an unconstitu-
tional enactment.”  Id., at 488.  If the statute is unconsti-
tutional, then courts enjoin “not the execution of the stat-
ute, but the acts of the official.”  Ibid.  Courts cannot issue 
an injunction based on a mere allegation “that officials of 
the executive department of the government are executing 
and will execute an act of Congress asserted to be uncon-
stitutional.”  Ibid.    “To  do  so  would  be  not  to  decide  a 
judicial controversy.”  Id., at 488–489. 

By  the  latter  half  of  the  20th  century,  however,  some 
jurists  began  to  conceive  of  the  judicial  role  in  terms  of
resolving general questions of legality, instead of address-
ing  those  questions  only  insofar  as  they  are  necessary  to
resolve individual cases and controversies.  See Bray 451. 
That  is  when  what  appears  to  be  “the  first  [universal] 
injunction  in  the  United  States”  emerged.  Bray  438.  In 
Wirtz v. Baldor Elec. Co., 337 F. 2d 518 (CADC 1963), the 
Court  of  Appeals  for  the  District  of  Columbia  Circuit 
addressed  a  lawsuit  challenging  the  Secretary  of  Labor’s