Fisher v Texas Update
The transcript of Wednesday’s oral argument was released that afternoon, and it’s fascinating reading. So fascinating, in fact, that I think I’m going to make a project of writing about it next week — a series of posts excerpting and discussing the most interesting exchanges.
In the meantime, I wanted to just highlight a couple of things.
First, the justices were clearly paying attention to the “standing” issue — the question of whether Abigail Fisher has a case she’s properly situated to bring before the Court. You can’t just decide to sue the government because you don’t like something they did. (If you could, everybody would be suing all the time, and the court system would collapse.) You have to show that you’ve been harmed in a way that the courts can fix, and the standards for what kinds of harm count in which circumstances are narrow and complicated.
I’ll go into this in a little more detail next week, but given the way I broke down the case’s possible outcomes in my last post, it’s worth underscoring that the Supremes may just rule that Fisher wasn’t harmed, or can’t be
In the meantime, I wanted to just highlight a couple of things.
First, the justices were clearly paying attention to the “standing” issue — the question of whether Abigail Fisher has a case she’s properly situated to bring before the Court. You can’t just decide to sue the government because you don’t like something they did. (If you could, everybody would be suing all the time, and the court system would collapse.) You have to show that you’ve been harmed in a way that the courts can fix, and the standards for what kinds of harm count in which circumstances are narrow and complicated.
I’ll go into this in a little more detail next week, but given the way I broke down the case’s possible outcomes in my last post, it’s worth underscoring that the Supremes may just rule that Fisher wasn’t harmed, or can’t be