By Richard Winger Scotusblog has this explanation about what happens to U.S. Supreme Court decisions that haven’t been issued yet, but in which the initial vote after the oral argument resulted in a tentative 5-4 decision, in which Justice Antonin Scalia was in the majority. As the article explains, such tentative votes don’t count, and there may be many 4-4 decisions. On a U.S. Supreme Court tie, the ruling of the lower court stands.
This article explains the consequences for several high-profile cases.
For election law, the first impact of Scalia’s death may be in Harris v McCrory, 15A809, the North Carolina gerrymandering …read more