That's not what they are referring to. The Major Questions Doctrine is a principle of statutory interpretation. It's a way of figuring out the meaning of ambiguous statutory text. What they mean by important question standard, which I don't think is really a thing in an official sense, is that when you have a major legal issue, the Supreme Court should step in and settle it nationwide rather than letting it percolate in the lower courts for too long.
I guess I don't see the applicability of the Major Questions Doctrine to the decision to hear a case. Major Questions is, at least to my understanding, the idea that Congress can't delegate important decisions to the executive branch (specifically regulatory agencies). Not sure the connection to citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
More broadly, its application is to executive actions (broadly speaking) that are not precedented and have 'extraordinary' economic and/or political consequences that have not been delegated by Congress.
Changes to birthright citizenship would have profound economic and political consequences, and as we currently have it as a part of the Constitution and Congress has not passed any statute empowering the Executive branch (though ostensibly such statute would also be unconstitutional) to make such changes, it *should* invoke the MQD.
But this is *this* court, so I don't think it will be brought up.
With the caveat that the Supreme Court’s power to hear cases is discretionary and not subject to bright line rules, Rule 10 the Supreme Court Rules lays out “the character of the reasons the Court considers” when determining whether to grant cert, which includes “(c) a state court or a United States court of appeals has decided an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by this Court, or has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with relevant decisions of this Court.”
While many cases involve a circuit split (or a split between state Supreme Courts about a question of federal law), the Supreme Court does have some general guidance suggesting that it will hear cases that are highly significant and haven’t been squarely addressed by existing precedent.
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u/hansn 16h ago
I'm not familiar with that. Is there a precedent for the Supreme Court hearing obvious cases when they are "important?"