Article VI of the Constitution describes what qualifies as the law of the land.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land…

The only national laws are the Constitution, congressional law, and treaties. Conspicuously missing are Supreme Court decisions. While the court is known for deciding the constitutionality of laws, its decisions are not themselves laws. In the strictest sense, the opinions rendered by the Supreme Court are binding only on the parties before it. //

The Supreme Court is just that, a court. It was established to adjudicate cases and controversies before it. Courts cannot make general pronouncements of law; they exist to settle disputes.

In fact, the Supreme Court is prohibited from issuing advisory opinions or ruling on laws that do not arise through litigation. Justices are not consultant scholars but arbiters in the limited setting of a legal case, not general legal or public policy matters. Courts issue their rulings in the form of judicial opinions, laying out the holding and the rationale. //

We assume when the high court rules, it is articulating what the Constitution says. The Constitution is the supreme law, but it is also a plain text. That text is the law, the ruling is not. As Justice Story said of judicial opinions in Swift v. Tyson, “They are, at most, only evidence of what the laws are, and are not, of themselves, laws.”