Of course. There's no court case that is based entirely on a hypothetical. But it seems exceedingly common - especially on the scale of SCOTUS - to abstract a s

Of course. There's no court case that is based entirely on a hypothetical. But it seems exceedingly common - especially on the scale of SCOTUS - to abstract a specific event or argument to the more general one. Take constitutional challenge to Obamacare for example. I assume they had to point to someone specific and say "this law violates that person's rights", but they absolutely "considered" and "responded to" the hypothetical in that case.