Supreme Court justices, like anyone else, sometimes change their minds.
True, there is stare decisis, the principle that they shouldn’t change their minds too often. Reason: If you expect citizens and the government to obey the law, they need to know what the law is and will be. Also, it’s only fair to treat people in similar situations similarly.
But stare decisis is not a hard-and-fast rule. There have been some famous changes of heart and/or mind, such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which reversed Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and declared racial segregation unconstitutional. Then there’s Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) and invalidated laws against homosexual sodomy. It is generally considered that in both of these cases, the court got it right the second time.
If the court ultimately rules that President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law is unconstitutional, it will be a reversal even bigger than Brown and Lawrence. And there will be no comforting consensus that the court has finally got it right.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-26/obamacare-is-unconstitutional-now-they-tell-us.html
True, there is stare decisis, the principle that they shouldn’t change their minds too often. Reason: If you expect citizens and the government to obey the law, they need to know what the law is and will be. Also, it’s only fair to treat people in similar situations similarly.
But stare decisis is not a hard-and-fast rule. There have been some famous changes of heart and/or mind, such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which reversed Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and declared racial segregation unconstitutional. Then there’s Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) and invalidated laws against homosexual sodomy. It is generally considered that in both of these cases, the court got it right the second time.
If the court ultimately rules that President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law is unconstitutional, it will be a reversal even bigger than Brown and Lawrence. And there will be no comforting consensus that the court has finally got it right.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-26/obamacare-is-unconstitutional-now-they-tell-us.html
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