Cite as: 505 U. S. 788 (1992)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
ecutive or Legislative Branches), in performing a function that is not wholly ministerial, will follow the advice of a subordinate official. The decision is by Constitution or law conferred upon him, and I think we are precluded from saying that it is, in practical effect, the decision of someone else. Indeed, judicial inquiry into or speculation about the probability of such "practical" subservience—never mind acting upon the outcome of such inquiry or speculation—seems to me disrespectful of a coordinate branch. On such a theory of redressability, suit would lie (assuming injury-in-fact could be shown) against the members of the President's Cabinet, or even the members of his personal staff, for the almost-sure-to-be-followed advice they give him in their respective areas of expertise.
The plurality, however, has a different theory of redressability. In its view, it suffices that the "authoritative interpretation of the census statute and constitutional provision" rendered by the District Court will induce the President to submit a new reapportionment that is consistent with what the District Court judgment orders the Secretary to submit. Ante, at 803. It seems to me this bootstrap argument eliminates, rather than resolves, the redressability question. If courts may simply assume that everyone (including those who are not proper parties to an action) will honor the legal rationales that underlie their decrees, then redressability will always exist. Redressability requires that the court be able to afford relief through the exercise of its power, not through the persuasive or even awe-inspiring effect of the opinion explaining the exercise of its power. It is the Court's judgment, in other words, its injunction to the Secretary of Commerce, that must provide appellees relief—not its accompanying excursus on the meaning of the Constitution.
Though the Court does not rely upon it, the judgment sought here did run against the President of the United States. The District Court's order expressly required, not
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