Jurisprudence
July 30, 202611:59 AM
SCOTUS will be deciding not only the fate of one executive order but whether its own doctrine of self-restraint in election cases still has any meaning.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Rawpixel/Getty Images Plus and Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
Imagine an NFL referee walking onto the field with two minutes left in the game to announce that the end zone has moved 10 yards downfield, effective immediately. Both teams would object, correctly, that changing the boundaries of the game this close to the final whistle makes a fair outcome impossible. For almost two decades, the Supreme Court has applied that same basic logic to elections, telling lower courts to leave voting rules alone once a race is close enough that altering them would confuse voters and overwhelm election administrators. This week, the Trump administration asked the court to do exactly what that rule exists to prevent, just from the other side of the field.
