Conversation

The last few years have seen a veritable onslaught of the Supreme Court overturning major precedent
—precedent that concerned hot-button issues,
spawned huge bodies of law on which lower courts now rely,
stood for 50+ years,
and had been reaffirmed multiple times by previous Courts.

And perhaps most gallingly,
the Supreme Court has claimed that these overturnings were justified by the “correct” readings of history
— expressly paving the way for Trump to do the same in the political arena.

To begin with the most obvious example, there is 2022’s Dobbs,
which overturned not only Roe in 1973 and Casey in 1992, but Whole Woman’s Health in 2016 and June Medical Services in 2020
— meaning that it was overturning not only one decision from 50 years earlier,
but a series of major Supreme Court decisions over the course of those 50 years,
each of which affirmed the central holding of Roe.

What’s more, the conservative majority did this by refashioning the notion of stare decisis to suit their own purposes,
stating that “Stare decisis, the doctrine on which Casey’s controlling opinion was based,
does not compel unending adherence to Roe’s abuse of judicial authority.”

The reason provided?
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”

In other words: Roe doesn’t count because the Court’s current majority never liked it to begin with.

This effectively converts stare decisis from a general need to respect all legal precedent
into a personal principle that you only have to bother respecting precedent that you like.

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-scotus-stare-decisis