Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20a66_new_m6io.pdf
Page Number: 4.0

Cite as:  592 U. S. ____ (2020) 

3 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

not state governors, not other state officials—bear primary 
responsibility for setting election rules.  Art. I, §4, cl. 1.  And 
the Constitution provides a second layer of protection too.  
If state rules need revision, Congress is free to alter them.  
Ibid. (“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections 
for  Senators  and  Representatives,  shall  be  prescribed  in 
each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may 
at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations . . . ”).  
Nothing  in  our  founding  document  contemplates the kind 
of  judicial  intervention  that  took  place  here,  nor  is  there 
precedent for it in 230 years of this Court’s decisions. 
  Understandably so.  Legislators can be held accountable 
by the people for the rules they write or fail to write; typi-
cally, judges cannot.  Legislatures make policy and bring to 
bear the  collective wisdom of  the whole people when they 
do, while courts dispense the judgment of only a single per-
son or a handful.  Legislatures enjoy far greater resources 
for  research  and  factfinding  on  questions  of  science  and 
safety than usually can be mustered in litigation between 
discrete parties before a single judge.  In reaching their de-
cisions,  legislators  must  compromise  to  achieve  the  broad 
social  consensus  necessary  to  enact  new  laws,  something 
not easily replicated in courtrooms where typically one side 
must win and the other lose. 
  Of  course,  democratic  processes  can  prove  frustrating.  
Because they cannot easily act without a broad social con-
sensus,  legislatures  are  often  slow  to  respond  and  tepid 
when they do.  The clamor for judges to sweep in and ad-
dress emergent problems, and the temptation for individual 
judges  to  fill  the  void  of  perceived  inaction,  can  be  great.  
But what sometimes seems like a fault in the constitutional 
design  was  a feature to  the  framers,  a  means of  ensuring 
that any changes to the status quo will not be made hastily, 
without  careful  deliberation,  extensive  consultation,  and 
social consensus. 
  Nor  may  we  undo  this  arrangement  just  because  we