The Conflict Between Stare Decisis and Overruling in Constitutional Adjudication
Neither Supreme Court Justices, nor scholars who have written on the subject, take the view that the Constitution constrains the Court’s power to overrule its constitutional precedents. This essay argues that the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause requires a constitutional law of overruling. Moreover, it proposes such a law on the basis of a conjunction of Marbury v. Madison, Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, and Cohens v. Virginia, together with Article III’s “case or controversy” requirement. I suggest that the Court should ask whether a precedent in question significantly impairs the constitutionalized Rule of Law. If it does, stare decisis would lapse for the Court, which then could freely consider whether to overrule. I argue that this approach provides due process, is conceptually sound, and is normatively attractive in the constitutional context.
Precedent and Judicial Power after the Founding
A recent decision by a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit enlivened the controversy over court rules that prevent citation to unpublished opinions when it held that the Circuit's non-citation rule violates Article III of the United States Constitution. This Article affirms the view that judicial power includes a doctrine of precedent, without relying solely upon an originalist interpretation of Article III. This approach identifies a consistent "core idea" of precedent that courts must consider how a similar case was decided in the past, even where there are varying ideas about the binding nature of that precedent. A long-standing tradition has viewed precedent as a necessary starting point for judicial decision. When a court departs from this core idea, it violates the essential function of the judiciary to treat like cases alike or explain the difference.
Flocculation tests with electrophoretically separated serum proteins.
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