Reply #46: Only true SOMETIMES. Sometimes SCOTUS has no jurisdiction/power (many examples)

[Land Shark]

By way of example all of the following would preclude SCOTUS power to decide even a constitutional case:

1. The Political Question Doctrine
2. Abstention
3. Lack of Standing (seen in some of these cases)
4. there are others

Thus, it is regularly the case that congress, the federal government, and the people are all left with what amounts to final power to determine the meaning of the constitution. The difference is that these other entities don't usually have the power to compel others to accept that interpretation as "law."

Moreover, even when SCOTUS does decide, there are (or should be) limits in each individual's conscience as to what they can accept as legitimate (otherwise there's no limit to what can readily be the authoritarian, unappealable power of a supreme court's interpretation). Such limits won't necessarily stop the enforcement of a decision, but over time and as a higher percentage of the public rejects a case, it loses power and acceptance in a way that's actually independent of the precedential power of courts. In this fashion, controversial cases like Dred Scott were undermined severely before they were ultimately overruled or amended out of existence.