Cite as: 588 U. S. ____ (2019)
7
Opinion of the Court
resolution through the judicial process.” Flast v. Cohen,
392 U. S. 83, 95 (1968). In these cases we are asked to
decide an important question of constitutional law. “But
before we do so, we must find that the question is presented
in a ‘case’ or ‘controversy’ that is, in James Madison’s
words, ‘of a Judiciary Nature.’ ” DaimlerChrysler Corp. v.
Cuno, 547 U. S. 332, 342 (2006) (quoting 2 Records of the
Federal Convention of 1787, p. 430 (M. Farrand ed. 1966)).
Chief Justice Marshall famously wrote that it is “the
province and duty of the judicial department to say what
the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177
(1803). Sometimes, however, “the law is that the judicial
department has no business entertaining the claim of
unlawfulness—because the question is entrusted to one of
the political branches or involves no judicially enforceable
rights.” Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U. S. 267, 277 (2004) (plurality opinion). In such a case the claim is said to present
a “political question” and to be nonjusticiable—outside the
courts’ competence and therefore beyond the courts’ jurisdiction. Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 217 (1962). Among
the political question cases the Court has identified are
those that lack “judicially discoverable and manageable
standards for resolving [them].” Ibid.
Last Term in Gill v. Whitford, we reviewed our partisan
gerrymandering cases and concluded that those cases
“leave unresolved whether such claims may be brought.”
585 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 13). This Court’s authority to
act, as we said in Gill, is “grounded in and limited by the
necessity of resolving, according to legal principles, a
plaintiff ’s particular claim of legal right.” Ibid. The
question here is whether there is an “appropriate role for
the Federal Judiciary” in remedying the problem of partisan gerrymandering—whether such claims are claims of
legal right, resolvable according to legal principles, or
political questions that must find their resolution elsewhere. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 8).