Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 54.0

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

7 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

weight.  As Chief Justice Marshall warned, “It is a maxim 
not  to  be  disregarded,  that  general  expressions,  in  every 
opinion, are to be taken in connection with the case in which
those expressions are used.”  Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 
264, 399 (1821).  To the extent a past court  offered views
“beyond the case,” those expressions “may be respected” in 
a later case “but ought not to control the judgment.”  Ibid. 
One “obvious” reason for this, Marshall continued, had to 
do with the limits of the adversarial process we inherited 
from  England:    Only  “[t]he  question  actually  before  the 
Court  is  investigated  with  care,  and  considered  in  its  full 
extent.  Other principles which may serve to  illustrate it, 
are  considered  in  their  relation  to  the  case  decided,  but 
their  possible  bearing  on  all  other  cases  is  seldom  com-
pletely investigated.”  Id., at 399–400. 

Abraham  Lincoln  championed  these  traditional  under-
standings  in  his  debates  with  Stephen  Douglas.    Douglas 
took the view that a single decision of this Court—no mat-
ter how flawed—could definitively resolve a contested issue 
for everyone and all time.  Those who thought otherwise, he
said, “aim[ed] a deadly blow to our whole Republican sys-
tem  of  government.”  Speech  at  Springfield,  Ill.  (June  26,
1857), in 2 The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln 401 (R.
Basler ed. 1953) (Lincoln Speech).  But Lincoln knew better. 
While  accepting  that  judicial  decisions  “absolutely  deter-
mine” the rights of the parties to a court’s judgment, he re-
fused to accept that any single judicial decision could “fully
settl[e]”  an issue,  particularly  when  that  decision  departs 
from  the  Constitution.  Id.,  at  400–401.    In cases  such as 
these, Lincoln explained, “it is not resistance, it is not fac-
tious, it is not even disrespectful, to treat [the decision] as 
not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the 
country.”  Id., at 401. 

After the Civil War, the Court echoed some of these same 
points.  It stressed that every statement in a judicial opin-