The final product was thus the apparent result of a compromise in which all nine justices could say they were united on a narrow bottom line. Still, the scope of the majority opinion was the subject of harsh criticism from the liberal justices.
“The court today needed to resolve only a single question: whether an individual state may keep a presidential candidate found to have engaged in insurrection off its ballot,” they wrote. “The majority resolves much more than the case before us.
“Although federal enforcement of Section 3 is in no way at issue,” the opinion said, “the majority announces novel rules for how that enforcement must operate. It reaches out to decide Section 3 questions not before us, and to foreclose future efforts to disqualify a presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.”