As for respect for precedent — lawyers call it “stare decisis,” Latin for “to stand by things decided” — Justice Stevens said he was not an absolutist. “But if this principle is to do any meaningful work in supporting the rule of law,” he said, “it must at least demand a significant justification, beyond the preferences of five justices, for overturning settled doctrine.”
At his confirmation hearings in 2005, Chief Justice Roberts, then an appeals court judge, said “adherence to precedent promotes evenhandedness, promotes fairness, promotes stability and predictability.”
“It is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent,” he said. But he added that adherence to precedent was not an “inexorable command” and that unworkable decisions may be revisited.
That is what happened Thursday, said Samuel Issacharoff, a law professor at New York University. “Roberts has the better of the debate,” Professor Issacharoff said. The main decision overruled by the court, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, was a much-questioned outlier, he said, and the court had a duty to clarify the law.
In his concurrence Thursday, Chief Justice Roberts said respect for precedent must have limits. Otherwise, he wrote, “segregation would be legal, minimum-wage laws would be unconstitutional and the government could wiretap ordinary criminal suspects without first obtaining warrants.”
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