Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting
work with daily in other legal spheres-like the "rule of reason" in antitrust law or the "arbitrary and capricious" standard for agency decisionmaking. See Standard Oil Co. of N. J. v. United States, 221 U. S. 1, 62 (1911); Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co., 463 U. S. 29, 42-43 (1983). Applying general standards to particular cases is, in many contexts, just what it means to do law.
And the undue burden standard has given rise to no unusual difficulties. Of course, it has provoked some disagreement among judges. Casey knew it would: That much "is to be expected in the application of any legal standard which must accommodate life's complexity." 505 U. S., at 878 (plurality opinion). Which is to say: That much is to be expected in the application of any legal standard. But the majority vastly overstates the divisions among judges applying the standard. We count essentially two. The Chief Justice disagreed with other Justices in the June Medical majority about whether Casey called for weighing the benefits of an abortion regulation against its burdens. See 591 U.S., at __, __ (slip op., at 6-7); ante, at 59, 60, and n. 53.[1] We agree that the June Medical difference is a difference but not one that would actually make a difference in the result of most cases (it did not in June Medical), and not one incapable of resolution were it ever to matter. As for lower courts, there is now a one-year-old, one-to-one Circuit split about how the undue burden standard applies to state laws that ban abortions for certain reasons, like fetal abnormality. See ante, at 61, and n. 57. That is about it, as far as we can see.[2] And that is not much. This Court
- ↑ Some lower courts then differed over which opinion in June Medical was controlling but that is a dispute not about the undue burden standard, but about the "Marks rule," which tells courts how to determine the precedential effects of a divided decision.
- ↑ The rest of the majority's supposed splits are, shall we say, unim-
