Mullin v. Al Otro Lado · ¶178

The Court is surprisingly cavalier with respect to these requirements today. Now that the metering policy is no longer in place, it is doubtful that a pronouncement about its lawfulness can “affect the rights of [the] litigants in the case before [us].” North Carolina v. Rice, 404 U. S. 244, 246 (1971) (per curiam). And in the absence of a live dispute “touching the legal relations of [the] parties,” ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted), we are left with only a hypothetical one requiring rank speculation over how §§1158(a)(1) and 1225(a)(1) might apply to a future policy. But “a dispute solely about the meaning of a law, abstracted from any concrete actual or threatened harm, falls outside the scope of the constitutional words ‘Cases’ and ‘Controversies.’” Al varez, 558 U. S., at 93.

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