Stare Decisis: Overturning Supreme Court Precedents [No. 86] - YouTube

The Supreme Court overturns its precedents rather less often than is thought, and that's

been especially true of the Roberts Court, although, in the last term, the Court overturned

three of its precedents, which was quite rare for that Court.

It did so in the Janus v. AFSCME case when it overturned the Abood Decision.

It did so in the Wayfair case, which involved the taxation of internet sales by out-of-state

vendors, which overturned the Quill case, and it did so implicitly at least in Trump

v. Hawaii, in which the court found that the infamous Korematsu case was no longer good

law.

But again, this is an exception where three cases in one term resulted in overturning prior

precedents.

In constitutional law, it is generally held that if a case has been wrongly decided in

the past, according to a proper reading of the constitution, it is subject to being overruled.

Circumstances do change, and you may need to change the law in light of that.

Moreover, we may find that a prior precedent has proven to be unworkable.

And a final reason for ignoring stare decisis, of course, is that the court may have gotten

the precedent wrong from a consideration of simple justice.

Accordingly, stare decisis enjoys less currency in constitutional law than it does in common

law.

Nevertheless, we do have some landmark cases in which stare decisis was not upheld, and

of course, the most common one is Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which overturned

Plessy v. Ferguson from 1896, and there it took almost 60 years for the court to do so.

Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the separate, but equal principle with respect to seating on

railroad trains.

The Brown v. Board of Education was different, in that it applied to public schools.

Nevertheless, the principles were still the same, so in that respect, both cases were

on all fours, and what you had in Brown v. Board of Education was, at last, addressing

the unfinished business from the Civil War amendments, mainly writing the wrongs that

had arisen under Jim Crow in the south.

Continuity of law is important for the integrity of the law, and for consistency and predictability.

Without it, we wouldn't know whether what we were doing was legal, or illegal.

Stare decisis limits the scope of judicial review, in the sense that it prohibits judges

from imposing their own personal values on the case at hand, and requires them to decide

the case if it is on point with precedents, according to those precedents.

Now, you will still have cases coming before the court that are cases of first impression.

But once that case is decided, it then becomes a precedent for future similar cases, and

that gives us the rule of law.

It gives us stability, predictability, and notice as to what the law is.