A landmark Supreme Court ruling can leave its named litigant personally unaffected.

Evidence

How did Roe v. Wade affect Norma McCorvey? It did not enable her to get an abortion. Her child was born and given up for adoption before the Supreme Court ever heard her case. Although she was, at the time, ecstatic about the Court’s ruling (“It makes me feel like I’m on top of Mount Everest”), she played little role in the litigation and did not even attend the oral argument before the Supreme Court. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 3097

Categorization

• CANDY: The plaintiff in the most famous abortion case never got an abortion and skipped her own oral argument — instantly retellable at a party.
• XREF: Directly illuminates the standing and adverseness doctrines from earlier chapters: courts require a live, adverse party, yet the human stakes can evaporate before decision.