Virginia Department of State Police v. Elliott

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that the case was moot because there was no continuing controversy
• refusing to apply doctrine where the party whose voluntary actions caused the mootness was the party seeking review
• refusing to apply doctrine where the party whose voluntary actions caused the mootness was the party seeking review
• noting the Court’s “duty ‘not to give opinions upon moot questions or abstract propositions, or to declare principles or rules of law which cannot affect the matter in issue in the case before it’” (quoting Hankins v. Town of Va. Beach, 182 Va. 642, 644 (1944))
• first quoting Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1, 17 (1998); and then quoting City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 109 (1983)
• “Advisory opinions represent an attenuate exercise of judicial power, one in which the Virginia judiciary ‘traditionally declines to participate.’” (quoting Commonwealth v. Harley, 256 Va. 216, 219-20 (1998))

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).