constitutional-law us-supreme-court
Question regarding Heller decision
<p>I was perusing the SCOTUS Heller(thanks to poster in another question) decision and found this within PDF</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We therefore assume that petitioners’ issuance of a license will
satisfy  respondent’s  prayer  for  relief  and  <strong>do  not  ad­dress</strong>
the licensing requirement</p>
</blockquote>
<p>From my interpretation, when a case is brought to SCOTUS, they do not address whether a law is constitutional or not. Instead, they judge/rule only on what the plaintiff is seeking relief from?</p>

<p>They can decide to make narrow decisions that just resolve the specific case before them and they can also decide to use the case as an example of a broader issue and make a sweeping ruling. In some cases were one side caves and makes the narrow issue moot they make no ruling and in other cases they decide the (technically) moot issue could come right up again (recent CA COVID restrictions as applied to home bible studies for example) so they do rule.</p>
