Stare decisis has really taken a beating over the past few years. Here's a non-comprehensive list of longstanding precedents the Supreme Court has tossed aside recently:
- Loper Bright overturned Chevron, a 40-year-old precedent.
- Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade, a 50-year-old precedent.
- Shelby County overturned key parts of the Civil Rights Act, a 50-year-old law.
- Students for Fair Admissions overturned affirmative action, a 60-year-old practice.
- Corner Post overturned the statute of limitations for contesting administrative rules, a 75-year-old precedent.
- Jarkesy overturned the SEC's use of internal tribunals, a 90-year-old precedent.
- Trump v. US invented a brand new criminal immunity provision for presidents, which had been unknown for the first 237 years of the country's history.
It's odd that a supposedly conservative court has been so eager to make so many radical changes to settled law, no?
This is why we need to jettison the word "conservative" and label them as radical reactionaries. Our two parties are one that runs the gamut from progressive to moderately conservative, and one that is purely back-to-the-19th-century radical.
+1
Oh, no, the 19th century was terrible — the philosophical foundations of socialism, the revolutions of 1848, the beginnings of labor unions, Darwin. Got to go back further than that. The 18th century? What, with the American and French Revolutions, liberté, egalité, fraternité? Horrors! No, must undo that nonsense called the Enlightenment ….
Yep! The only precedent they think is worth respecting is one that already does what they want to do. Otherwise, off with its head! (Which, btw, has been pretty much Clarence Thomas's actually declared position almost from the start of his time on the court. The rest won't admit it, though Alito might drop the pretense soon.)
And I'll endorse jeffreycmcmahon above. They're only "conservative" in the very weak generic sense of "right-wing." They are radical reactionary absolutist monarchists whose time machine might stop somewhere around 1300 if they could take their mod cons with them.
Most of these people during their confirmation hearings all said that no man is above the law and the president was subject to the rule of law. Did they perjure themselves?
With this post I think we can retire the Captain Obvious award.
If I recall correctly, a big part of the reasoning in 2013's Shelby County decision was that the formulation of which jurisdictions were subjected to heightened scrutiny under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was decades old.
Never mind that Congress had updated the Act in 1970, 1975, 1982, 1992, and 2006.
Without bad faith…..
Conservatives would have no arguments at all
No, Congress reauthorized the law in those years, but did not update the formula. That was the whole point. Whether the decision was correct or incorrect is another matter, but it is impossible to make that determination unless we understand what the issue was.
Meh.
Obviously Congress could have updated the formula if they thought it was necessary to do so, or they could have repealed the entire law if they felt it was no longer relevant, whether due to the formula or otherwise.
But they did neither of these things.
The Supreme Court had a law that Congress was happy with in 2006, and that was signed into law by the sitting President. It is not the role of the Court to decide what the law should be, something that conservative Justices at one time proclaimed at every opportunity.
In this case, however, the Court presumed to overrule Congress not on Constitutional grounds nor on conflict with other laws, but rather upon finding of fact and in the crafting of an appropriate response.
Back in the old days, we were pretty certain that unelected officials should not presume to do this.
Tsk, tsk, Kevin, you just revealed your ignorance of the Alito Rule:
“Any decision adopted more than X years ago, where X is a number chosen to support the current desired decision, is deemed not to have any precedential value.”
... EXCEPT when it is the decision of, say, witch-burning magistrates of the 17th century, in which case it is Original and thus beyond question.
They are radical reactionaries AND they are a little bit power-mad. They have now appointed themselves the arbiters of what is reasonable delegation of authority by Congress, what is reasonable exercise of delegated authority by the Executive, and what constitutes "official" and non-"official" Presidential action.
This is in part possible because Congress is paralyzed (by the same people who saw to it the majority of this Court was confirmed), which makes rectification of it effectively impossible. (Plus, as a side benefit, it greatly empowers corporations and wealthy individuals, who can afford to litigate indefinitely, and this of course is near and dear to the hearts of Corporatists like Roberts.)
It's a disaster in the making, because there's no way the courts can handle all of this. So they will handle it unevenly, spottily, and inconsistently -- if at all -- and in the process systematically destroy their own legitimacy in the eyes of the people. But like good corporate drones, they're focused on near-term profits, and they probably figure they'll have retired before the sh!t really hits the fan.
Unless, of course, Supreme Leader Trump decides to send the Red Hats to round them up one day for some perceived transgression...
which makes it especially surprising that coney barrett is the one who sems to waver more than the other lean six supremes.
lord knows a maga mob would love another lady scalp to add to their hillary display.
They're CON-servatives.
And then for the Court (meaning Roberts, himself) to hypocritically point to stare decisis while overturning Chevron, to claim that past administrative actions remain in force.
But the cherry on top is that the Court (meaning Roberts, himself) would condemn Korematsu not even a decade ago only to give POTUS the unquestioned power to Korematsu anyone for ostensibly presidential reasons.
Talk about a dickhead leading a bag of dicks.
Radical revanchists who call themselves "conservatives" when it is politically useful to do so. These are the folks who for a few years called themselves "classical liberals" to try to corner actual liberals as beyond the pale.
Don't stop there...
WE can't have precedent, facts, experts, laws get in our way. And the constitution is ours to mold as we will.
This is the most troubling aspect/behavior to me....they just change the facts to support their predetermined outcome....Jan 6, the praying football coach, and of course Dobbs....The Supreme court lies and cheats for sure, but it is molding, changing the facts that is most troublesome....if you change the facts, you can do anything, Best Wishes, Traveller
Kafka is laughing.
No so unusual for complete assholes.
Worst part? The Dems have been helping and, apparently will continue to help, the cons to do what they are doing.The establishment Dems may think liberal ideas/policies won’t work. But what they are doing sure isn’t.
I've been wondering about this issue myself the last few weeks. And I conclude: the reduced regard for precedent means it will be an easier judicial lift to overturn some of these startlingly bad decisions.
Live by the sword, Federalist Society, die by the fucking sword.
Calling themselves "conservative" was always a little in-joke, like "the liberal media." Of course, the media fell for both lies, and so here we are.