Article III of the Constitution defines the proper scope of the federal courts' jurisdiction as limited to adjudicating "Cases" and "Controversies." The Supreme Court has articulated several legal doctrines emanating from Article III that restrict when federal courts will adjudicate disputes, such as standing, ripeness, mootness, and the prohibition against issuing advisory opinions. These "justiciability" doctrines are rooted in both constitutional and prudential considerations and evince respect for the separation of powers, including the "proper—and properly limited—role of the courts in a democratic society." One justiciability concept is the "political question" doctrine—according to which federal courts will not adjudicate certain controversies because their resolution is more proper within the political branches. Because the doctrine implicates the separation of powers, application of the political question doctrine has sparked controversy. For example, the doctrine has regularly been invoked in federal courts in cases concerning foreign policy. Federal courts have declined to adjudicate a recent challenge to the operation of the United States' "kill list," certain claims alleging presidential violation of the war powers clause of the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution, and claims whose adjudication might harm the country's foreign policy interests. Some commentators have identified such cases as reflecting judicial deference to actions of the executive branch in the area of national security; deference, it may be argued, that occurs at the expense of Congress, because courts invoking the doctrine sometimes effectively decline to enforce a congressional statute. As a preliminary matter, it is important to distinguish the political question doctrine from cases presenting political issues. Courts adjudicate controversies with political ramifications on a regular basis. For example, the Supreme Court has held that certain electoral processes deny citizens the right to vote based on their skin color, and has upheld a subpoena directed against the President of the United States. Both decisions necessarily had political consequences. Instead, the political question doctrine applies to issues that courts determine are best resolved within the politically accountable branches of government—Congress or the executive branch. Understanding exactly when the doctrine applies, however, can be difficult. The "precise contours of the doctrine are murky and unsettled," without a clear consensus among the members of the Supreme Court or academia. The Supreme Court itself has noted that the political question doctrine has caused "[m]uch confusion"; and determining if it applies to a given case requires "a delicate exercise in constitutional interpretation." In order to illuminate the circumstances in which courts find cases to present nonjusticiable political questions, this report will examine the origins of the political question doctrine and modern Supreme Court case law on the matter. In addition, it will explore a few significant applications of the doctrine in the lower federal courts. Finally, this report will unpack a recent Supreme Court case rejecting application of the doctrine that may have significant implications for the political question doctrine in the future. The origins of the political question doctrine can be traced back to Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in Marbury v. Madison . Chief Justice Marshall, in addressing whether the judiciary could issue a writ of mandamus against an executive branch official, distinguished between individual rights dependent on executive branch legal duties on the one hand, and political matters left to presidential discretion on the other. While the former are justiciable, the latter might not be. Justice Marshall explained that the Constitution entrusted a scope of discretion in some areas to the "executive departments alone"; but "whether the legality of an act of the head of a department be examinable in a court of justice or not, must always depend on the nature of that act." "[T]he President is invested with certain important political powers," in which he—and those officers he appoints to carry out his will—are not accountable to the judicial branch. These political powers "respect the nation, not individual rights, and being entrusted to the executive, the decision of the executive is conclusive." Accordingly, The conclusion from this reasoning is, that where the heads of departments are the political or confidential agents of the executive, merely to execute the will of the President, or rather to act in cases in which the executive possesses a constitutional or legal discretion, nothing can be more perfectly clear than that their acts are only politically examinable. But where a specific duty is assigned by law, and individual rights depend upon the performance of that duty, it seems equally clear that the individual who considers himself injured, has a right to resort to the laws of his country for a remedy. The definition of a political question given by Chief Justice Marshall appears to include only those matters where the President is entrusted by the Constitution with unrestricted discretion, such as choosing who to nominate to the Senate for confirmation as executive branch officers, but not matters that implicate individual rights. Nonetheless, the scope of what constitutes a political question appears to have broadened since Marbury v. Madison . Courts have found political questions in areas not solely committed to the President's discretion, including when individual rights are implicated. The beginning of this shift can be seen in the Supreme Court's next "classic representation of the early political question doctrine." In Luther v. Borden , the Court declined to adjudicate a challenge to the Rhode Island charter government under the republican form of government clause in Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. At the time of the Dorr Rebellion in the 1840s, Rhode Island had not adopted a state constitution. Instead, it operated under a charter established by King Charles II in 1663. The charter government was challenged as violating the Guarantee Clause, which provides that the "United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of government." The Court held that the challenge was a political question, explaining that under the Guarantee Clause, it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State. For as the United States guarantee to each State a republican government, Congress must necessarily decide what government is established in the State before it can determine whether it is republican or not.... And its decision is binding on every other department of the government, and could not be questioned in a judicial tribunal. Because the determination of which entity was the lawful state government was committed to another branch of government—Congress—the Court refused to provide its own interpretation. As noted above, while Marbury v. Madison identified some matters entrusted to the executive branch as political questions, at least by the time Luther v. Borden was decided, certain matters committed to the discretion of Congress could also pose political questions. In addition, the Court in Luther v. Borden also noted certain prudential considerations that weighed against judicial resolution of the case, such as the chaos that would ensue if the Court invalidated a state's government. The Court has subsequently characterized the case as resting in part on the "lack of criteria by which a court" could make the determination; and these prudential concerns were later repeated by the Court in a subsequent challenge to a state law under the Guarantee Clause. Following Luther v. Borden , the Court dismissed challenges to state or congressional action under the Guarantee Clause on a number of occasions, including challenges to state congressional districting. Nevertheless, in the Court's "oft-quoted" modern encapsulation of the political question doctrine, Baker v. Carr , the Court explained that challenges to election districts could be brought under the Equal Protection Clause. In that case, a challenge was brought to a state's legislative apportionment of election districts, which, the plaintiffs claimed, resulted in an "impairment of their votes" through a "classification [that] disfavors the voters in the counties in which they reside, placing them in a position of constitutionally unjustifiable inequality vis-a-vis voters in irrationally favored counties." The Court distinguished claims brought under the Guarantee Clause from claims under the Equal Protection Clause. Cases presenting political questions—including the Guarantee Clause cases—implicated the relationship between the "judiciary and the coordinate branches of the Federal Government, and not the judiciary's relationship to the states." In addition, while the Guarantee Clause did not contain "judicially manageable standards which a court could utilize independently in order to identify a State's lawful government," standards "under the Equal Protection Clause are well developed and familiar." The Court thus ruled that the Equal Protection claim was justiciable, and outlined six matters that could present political questions in other circumstances: [1] a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or [2] a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or [3] the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or [4] the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or [5] an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or [6] the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question. The Court did not, however, explain precisely how these factors were to be applied in future cases, nor did it describe the relative weight of each factor; although in a later case applying the doctrine, a plurality of the Court explained that they "are probably listed in descending order of both importance and clarity." In addition, the Court in Baker noted that cases implicating foreign policy could frequently pose political questions, and explained that in such cases the Court engages in a "a discriminating analysis of the particular question posed, in terms of the history of its management by the political branches, of its susceptibility to judicial handling in the light of its nature and posture in the specific case, and of the possible consequences of judicial action." While the Court in Baker delineated what factors were relevant in determining whether a case posed a political question, the Court did not explicitly identify the doctrine's foundation.