5 votes, four in the plurality and one in the dissent
Frank Cross
crossf at mail.utexas.edu
Wed Jun 30 06:36:24 PDT 2004
I'm pretty sure that no one is going to be able to produce a clear guide
here on whether one can combine plurality and dissenting votes.
One obvious reason is that the Supreme Court uses outcome voting, rather
than issue voting.
There are a few Supreme Court cases with two major issues, where a
majority each of the discrete issues voted for the appellant, but the
decision was for the appellee. This has been an issue in precedent for
some time, without much resolution. It's tempting to say that judges
should follow the issue voting, though this is tantamount to a lower court
reversing the Supreme Court's outcome and disregarding the Court's decision
to use outcome rather than issue voting.
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