Free Republic

In the wake of Roe being aborted, some liberal politicians, such as senators Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Susan Collins (R-Me.), are crying foul because they claim that SCOTUS justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch deceived them over stare decisis (respect for precedent) during confirmation hearings. What’s unsaid is that stare decisis is itself a deception. In fact, our Founders would be aghast at the standard. Why? It’s simple: If a precedent clearly conforms to the Constitution, then regard for stare decisis is unnecessary for a precedent-aligned ruling; all a justice need do is reference the Constitution and he'll vote incidentally...

These same considerations that Casey relied upon nearly 30 years ago to justify affirming Roe v. Wade provide the precise basis to overturn Casey today.Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—a case considering the constitutionality of Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act which, with some exceptions, bans abortions after 15 weeks. While in granting certiorari the Supreme Court limited the question on appeal to “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional,” Wednesday’s arguments focused more broadly on whether the high court should overrule Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood. Even...

A close look at Amy Coney Barrett's legal writings indicates deep respect for the precedent set by landmark Supreme Court cases. President TrumpÂ’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court is a welcome choice. Senate confirmation cannot come soon enough. Judge Barrett clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for two years and considers the great conservative jurist her mentor. That is heartening.But it is not the herald of coming victories that the pro-life movement wants it to be. Any euphoria among pro-lifers is premature at best. Celebrating BarrettÂ’s nomination as the long-awaited death knell for Roe v....

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that the principle of stare decisis has never required the court to uphold 'erroneous precedents.' In a case that might appear to have no bearing on the right to abortion, a U.S. Supreme Court justice may have signaled a willingness to overturn Roe v. Wade.In Ramos v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that criminal defendants must be convicted by unanimous state juries, overturning a Louisiana murder conviction based on a 10-2 jury verdict. This decision overturns the court’s 1972 ruling in Apodaca v. Oregon, which held there is no right to a...

A recent Scotus decision took a stab at the problem with Stare Decisis in our Constitutional republic. A Pennsylvania township law forced a landowner to provide public access to an old graveyard on her property. At issue was the Fifth Amendment, “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” An open and shut case, right? Not according to the social justice wing of the Scotus. While the majority found the township’s law to be an unconstitutional taking, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor invoked stare decisis and stuck with...

Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday said that the Supreme Court should take more action to overturn prior “demonstrably erroneous decisions.” In a concurring opinion issued in a double-jeopardy case, Thomas wrote that he believes the court was correct in not overturning a doctrine that allows an individual to be charged with the same crime by federal and state prosecutors. However, he wrote that the Supreme Court should revisit its use of the “stare decisis” doctrine, under which a past precedent is not be overturned unless there’s a compelling reason to do so. Thomas wrote that the use of the judicial...

At crucial junctures, the Supreme Court has twisted the Constitution that guarantees liberty toward government oppression. Start with The Slaughter-House Cases (1873) and U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), which blew away the protection of the Bill of Rights with which the 14th Amendment’s framers and ratifiers thought they had clothed freed slaves against depredations by state governments. The result was 90 years of Jim Crow tyranny in the South. “I have a personal interest in this,” Justice Thomas once said. “I lived under segregation.” He grew up in 1950s Savannah, Ga., where the law forbade him to drink out of this...

One of the most important doctrines in Western law is that of stare decisis, a Latin term of art which means "to stand by decided cases; to uphold precedents; to maintain former adjudications". In modern jurisprudence, however, it has come to take on a life of its own, with all precedents being presumed to be well-founded, unbiased legal decisions, rather than political decisions, and presumed to have both the authority of the constitutional enactments on which they are based, plus that of the precedents on which they are based, so that later precedents are presumed to be more authoritative than...

The new conservative majority at the Supreme Court seems to have everyone on edge. That is evident following the decision of the Nine to overturn a precedent on the question of whether the Constitution — as Justice Clarence Thomas put it in a majority opinion — “permits a State to be sued by a private party without its consent in the courts of a different State.” The court, which had said yes in 1979, now says no. Forget that the case has nothing to do with Roe v. Wade (even the Times concedes that). The liberals’ sudden solicitude for stare...

If you think the Supreme Court's conservative majority won't touch well-established legal precedent: think again. In a 5-4 ruling on Monday, the court overturned a 40-year-old precedent in a low-profile sovereign immunity case, a move liberals see as a potential indication that the precedent set by Roe v. Wade could be under threat. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, "stare decisis does not compel continued adherence to this erroneous precedent," referring to the principle of legal precedent. He did not suggest that there was an urgent issue or functional problem with existing doctrine -- simply that it was wrong....

Did Judge Brett Kavanaugh write the roadmap for saving ObamaCare? That question has dwelled at the center of passionate debate in the conservative legal community for days as Kavanaugh, a federal appeals judge in the District of Columbia, finds himself as one of President Trump’s four finalists for a place on the U.S. Supreme Court. The allegation from conservative critics is rooted in a 2011 ObamaCare case where Kavanaugh dissented against the ruling but acknowledged that the Affordable Care Act’s “individual mandate provision” could fit “comfortably within Congress’ Taxing Clause power.” Kavanaugh's detractors say that language helped provide the roadmap...

The Janus ruling was earth-shaking (in a hugely positive way). Way past time for out-of-control government unions (aka Democrat money-laundering machines) to be taken down at least one peg. But I thought the more important takeaway was SCOTUS putting in writing the idea that precedent is insufficient grounds for preserving bad law that conflicts with fundamental constitutional tenets. "Fundamental free speech rights are at stake...and [prior precedent] Abood [v. Detroit Bd of Ed.] was poorly reasoned." - Justice Alito It's really bad news for the lefties, who always scream about "settled law" and stare decisis. This ruling has huge implications...

Can we stop pretending that liberal jurisprudence is anything but warmed over politics in a judicial robe?  Yesterday's decision by the Supreme Court in McDonald v. Chicago proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the left-leaning justices will vote what they believe regardless of what a law's intentions were.  Concepts like 'stare decisis' (the legal principle that obliges judges to respect precedents established by prior decisions) that were so important during the confirmation hearings of Justice Roberts, mean nothing to the sitting liberal justices.  Each of the left leaning judges voted as if The District of Columbia vs Heller...

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF OREGON JUAN MARTINEZ;BYRON BECK; DAN O'NEIL; STEVE KENISON; RUPERT KINNARD; SCOTT STAPLEY; MARC ACITO; FLOYD SKLAVER; BECKY HANSON; KATHY FLYNN; CRISTINA CARAVACA; SANDRA NARANJO; MICHELLE SNYDER; HEIDI THORSTAD; DIANE GROFF; LIZ CAHILL; TIM SMITH; KENT KULLBY; KELLY BURKE; DOLORES DOYLE; DANIEL E. H. BRYANT; and GLENNA SHEPHERD, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. THEODORE R. KULONGOSKI, Governor of the State of Oregon; and STATE OF OREGON, Defendants-Respondents, and DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE COALITION PAC, an Oregon political action committee; TIMOTHY NASHIF; MICHAEL WHITE; and DENNIS R. TUURI, Intervenors-Respondents. Marion County Circuit Court 05C11023 A130818 Joseph C....

Closing a chapter on one of the bloodiest crimes in recent New York City history, the state’s highest court today tossed out the death sentence imposed on a man for his role in the murders of five workers at a Wendy’s restaurant in Queens seven years ago. The man, John B. Taylor, was the last remaining inmate on New York State’s death row. The divided decision by the Court of Appeals not only ordered the trial court to resentence Mr. Taylor — almost certainly to life in prison without parole — but it also reaffirmed a landmark decision in 2004...

Led by Senator Charles Schumer, Senate Democrats are trying to bamboozle the American public into believing that Bush appointees to the Supreme Court are dangerous radicals. Senator Schumer's suggestion and Justice Beyer's unusual and inappropriate complaint to Senator Specter that the newest members of the Supreme Court -- Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito -- are ignoring and overruling established precedent is of a piece with the mandarinate's general and untrue response to the Administration: the Mongols have taken over. I have reviewed the law on stare decisis (the doctrine that judges should rule in accord with past precedent to...

"Horst Wessel was murdered because he was a National Socialist." Joseph Goebbels-1930 "Matthew Shepherd was killed because he was gay" Common Belief-Today Both statements tell stories that don't reflect all the facts of the original cases. Adolf Hitler postulated in "Mein Kampf" that if you tell a big lie, it would be believed more than the small ones that everyone tells and accepts as being lies. Hitler also believed that even if the truth came out later, the lie would still stick. Horst Wessel was a Nazi Storm Trooper (Brownshirt) who left his wealthy family to live on the streets....

by Ken Concannon Other Articles by Ken Concannon Roe v. Wade: A Not-So-Super Precedent 04/20/06 On the second day of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in September 2005, pro-choice Republican committee chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania introduced the subject of stare decisis, a Latin term meaning "to stand by that which is decided.” In This Article...A Grim AttachmentIf the Print Is Small Enough They Won’t NoticePlease Don’t Confuse Us With the Facts A Grim Attachment It’s a maxim that abortion supporters, like Specter, cling to dearly because most constitutional scholars are well aware that the Roe decision...

A decent respect for the Constitution should cause the Supreme Court to reconsider some past decisionsAT THE OUTSET OF Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter asked a series of questions about the rather arcane subject of stare decisis, which is the judicial practice of following prior decisions. Eventually the questions took an odd turn, with Specter asking Alito whether he agreed that the right to abortion had special immunity from reconsideration, that is, whether it is "super-precedent." Alito parried this by declining to "get into categorizing precedents as super-precedents or super-duper precedents." That sort of terminology, Alito...

Okay, the title is made up, and it would “more properly” read non stare decicis, or “do not stand by the decision.” The point is, there are occasions when old precedent is not only non-binding, but to follow it would be stupid, illegal and unconstitutional, and just plain un-Godly. With all that banters about regarding the strict following of the decisions of the higher courts coming from both the left and the right, aren’t you suspicious that you are are not getting the whole story on Stare Decisis? Do you really believe that our Founders would have shackled themselves to...