22/ If any member of the Supreme Court implicitly endorses ISL—and THOMAS and GORSUCH have, implicitly, done so today—it makes those who were pushing ISL (at the time, in 2000, widely said to be so outside the mainstream all 9 justices would reject it) seem less insurrectionisty.

23/ The explicit reason THE MAJORITY gave for issuing an opinion was a technically sound but substantively meh justification—the sort of explanation for a ruling a judge gives that can be applauded by those who like it and decried by those who don’t with equal license and fervor.

24/ The explicit reason THOMAS gave for issuing an opinion on a case he’d held moot—clearly a hypocrisy even the spectacularly (I dare say historically) hypocritical ALITO wouldn’t join him in—was, well, nothing, really. He just had to say how much he disagreed with THE MAJORITY.

25/ Sure, THOMAS—and by signing on to his dissent, GORSUCH—opined that THE MAJORITY holding was egregiously dumb and dangerous and mercurial, but honestly this has become par for the course for dissents in this century. Ruling on a case you’ve called moot is pretty extraordinary.

26/ Where things get tricky is explaining the reasoning of THE MAJORITY vs. THOMAS/GORSUCH. You first need to understand that while solid opinions are all different, every egregiously wrong and profoundly disingenuous dissent has one thing in common: it’s damnably hard to follow.

27/ What THOMAS seems to be saying (with GORSUCH) in his dissent is that while Supreme Court precedent confirms that a state court can oversee a state legislature when it comes to *procedural* aspects of running elections, it can’t oversee its legislature on *substantive* issues.

28/ If that sounds—on it face—batshit crazy to you, well, it should.

Because it is.

Let me explain *why*, though.

29/ There is a key principle in constitutional and statutory interpretation—in other words, in jurisprudence at both the state and federal levels—that says a judge must *never* interpret a given constitutional clause or statutory provision in a way that frames it as a 'nonsense.'

30/ This is actually a more *technical*—if still only implicit—form of self-regulation than you may think.

The reason for this is that judges must often look at the 'intent' of the Founders (for the US Constitution) or legislators (for statutes) in interpreting what things mean.

31/ If a judge interprets a clause or provision in a way that renders it a 'nonsense,' it means that judge is saying—in effect, if not literally—that its author(s) were simply crazy. And that conclusion is *always* going to be seen as a judge sidestepping their interpretive role.

32/ Here, THOMAS is saying a state court can review how a legislature handles an election’s *procedural details*.

Oh, that’s nice—that’s quaint.

But then THOMAS says the legislature can just *pick an election winner randomly* and the state’s Supreme Court has to go f*ck itself.