To be sure, the government almost always agrees to extend Supreme Court decisions to all similarly situated people. In most cases, it would be pointless to try to limit a decision to the parties to the lawsuit. Each new person who was denied the benefit of the ruling could bring his own lawsuit, and the courts would simply rule the same way. Trying to limit the decision to the parties to the suit would just delay the inevitable.

But the King litigation is different, because almost everybody who is eligible for the tax credits is more than happy to get them. Most people who receive tax credits will never sue to challenge them. Lawsuits can be brought only by those with a personal stake, so in most cases the tax credits will never come before a court. The administration is therefore free to follow its own honest judgment about what the law requires.

This idea may seem radical, but it has a strong legal pedigree. Judicial authority, or jurisdiction, is case-specific and person-specific. That is true even of the Supreme Court, which the Constitution gives “judicial power” to decide “cases” and “controversies.” It is reaffirmed by Marbury v. Madison (1803), which affirmed the power of judicial review by relying on the Supreme Court’s duty to decide “particular cases.”

President Obama could also take a page from President Lincoln. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln discussed a recent Supreme Court decision about slavery. He forswore “any assault upon the court,” but stressed that “the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people” ought not be “irrevocably fixed” by a single suit brought by only a few. He said that Supreme Court opinions were thus “entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases” but were ultimately limited to “the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit.” If the Obama administration thinks the stakes are high enough, it can take the same path.

There are legal wrinkles, of course. Lower courts have sometimes claimed legal authority to invalidate a regulation (which is at issue in this case) even for parties who aren’t before the court. And some employers might be able to bring lawsuits that would call their employees’ subsidies into question. But the administration has already raised legal defenses to those potential problems in other lawsuits and could press those defenses here, too.