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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