The lawsuit filed by the attorney general of Texas, supported by 17 state attorneys general, 106 members of Congress, and joined by President Trump, is an abuse of the privilege granted to lawyers seeking redress in the courts of legitimate claims, and notably, in the U.S. Supreme Court. The suit is a dishonest and irresponsible effort to use the highest court as a prop to advance a political agenda. The court should throw out this perversion of justice, and impose sanctions on the litigants.

The theory of Supreme Court jurisdiction, as every first-year law student knows, is the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction to hear suits brought by one state against another state. A well-known example is the 1998 suit brought by New York against New Jersey challenging sovereignty of Ellis Island in New York’s harbor, the historic main immigration entry facility into the United States.  The court ruled 6-3 that an 1834 compact between the two states gave New York jurisdiction over the Island but gave New Jersey sovereignty over the surrounding waters and 24 acres of landfill.

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