Page:Moore v. Harper.pdf/50

12 a particular legislative Act, which Harper I supposedly made inoperative, will again be “operative” or “effective” as a state statute. (internal quotation marks omitted).

This reasoning bears no connection to the judicial power of this Court or the court below. Judicial power is the power to adjudicate “definite and concrete” disputes “touching the legal relations of parties having adverse legal interests,” Rice, 404 U. S., at 246 (internal quotation marks omitted), by “determin[ing] the respective rights and liabilities or duties” of the parties before a court in a particular case, Nicholson v. ''State Ed. Assistance Auth.'', 275 N. C. 439, 447, 168 S. E. 2d 401, 406 (1969). Thus, a judgment binds the rights of the parties in that case, see Taylor, 553 U. S., at 892–893, and it awards remedies that “operate with respect to [those] specific parties,” California, 593 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8) (internal quotation marks omitted). In deciding any case, the court must “ascertai[n] and declar[e] the law applicable to the controversy”; this duty, in turn, implies “the negative power to disregard an unconstitutional enactment” in deciding the case. Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488 (1923); accord, Nicholson, 275 N. C., at 447, 168 S. E. 2d, at 406; Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 176–178 (1803). But this negative power of judicial review is not a “power per se to review and annul acts of [legislation] on the ground that they are unconstitutional,” Mellon, 262 U. S., at 488; “to change or to repeal statutes,” Person v. Doughton, 186 N. C. 723, 725, 120 S. E. 481, 483 (1923); or to issue orders that “operate on legal rules in the abstract,” California, 593 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8) (internal quotation marks omitted). Courts of law simply do not render “judgments” that toggle statutes from “operative” to “inoperative” and back again, as if judicial review were some sort of in rem jurisdiction over legislative Acts.

Indeed, such a conception would contradict the most basic