Will Baude

That's sort of what Caleb Nelson has described as the kind of original inquiry.

And I think it seems right that the proper party to challenge election rules are the candidates.

But I would have said that about some other cases where the court didn't think they were standing.

So...

I think so in the sense of like in the affirmative action cases, right?

People can sue not just before they apply, but they can sue after they're rejected and often they do.

I guess what I wonder, though, is in a front of action case, suppose you were admitted.

And you said, yes, I was admitted, but I unfairly didn't have a fair process because of front of action.

And so I would like a determined, I would like a correct evaluation of my application.

I don't know such a case.

And while logically your interest in a fair process would apply even if you prevailed, don't you kind of think the court would say, what are you complaining about?

Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that's so hard to tell is the thing about common sense is it's so hard to know what's driving it.

So it could be that it could be just an intuition that like this is elections and that's special for various reasons.

So we can indulge a kind of this is what the dissent accuses the majority of is sort of election law exceptionalism.

And it is in fact true that election law frequently gets treated in ways that other areas of law don't get treated.

So it could be that.

Yeah.

Again, it could just be the strong intuition that, you know, you are injured.

There is also like people use sports game analogies in this case, right?

Like, so, you know, if halfway through the game, they suddenly award five points to their team, like probably you don't want like standing to challenge that to turn on like how close the game is.