Brown v. Board of Education is the most famous, but how many other times? When is the court likely to do that? Can they do it arbitrarily? I could swear there was another thread about this, but I couldn’t find it.
Thanks,
Rob
Countless times. Off the top of my head there are Lawrence v. Texas, Gideon v Wainwright, and Loving v. Virginia. There are hundreds of others, to be sure.
Essentially the entire history of the Supreme Court is one generation of justices reversing the decisions of the previous generation as concepts about the world evolve and reverse.
Notions about what the federal government can and cannot do; the relationship between the federal government and the states; international law; privacy and personal rights; unions vs. corporations; rights to sue, prisoners rights, and police powers; obscenity, indecency, and censorship; everything you might consider basic and unexceptional have changed radically over the years.
If your next question is how this can possibly square with any interpretation of the Constitution except one as a living document, evolving with the times, I have no answer for you, even conceptually.
And even those justices who object to that theory, but believe in stare decisis (deferring to prior holdings) are perfectly willing to abandon that principle when it suits them.
(and I know the most extreme textualists reject stare decisis completely-but thomas is not who I’d look to as a thoughtful and analytical jurist).
Lawrence v. Texas
However, Scalia was willing to revisit partial birth abortion in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), seven years after the court rejected a near-identical ban on the procedure in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000)
I am not a lawyer, so I don’t grasp the subtleties here, but when the court reverses a prior decision, are the justices refining the law or are they just changing their minds? If you lose an appeal because the court has handed down a decision in an identical case, on what basis can you appeal to the Supreme Court? Do you need a reason?
Let’s say for example that the day after Roe v. Wade or Bush v. Gore was rendered. All nine Justices were killed crossing the street and the Senate quickly confirms nine nominees who have political opinions counter to the upshot of the prior decision, i.e. thinks abortion should be illegal or Gore should be the President or whatever. Can Wade sue Roe or Gore sue Bush and get their cases heard and possibly a contrary decision rendered?
The court can say yea or nay without further explanation as well, can’t they?
Thanks for your help,
Rob
Nitpick: a large proportion (most?) of the decisions rendered by the Supreme Court don’t turn upon constitutional interpretation, but upon the interpretation of federal statute, state law, so-called federal common law, etc.
Otherwise, nice post.
The US Government Printing Office publishes an Annotated Constitution, which is the text of the Constitution plus commentary from experts at the Library of Congress and Congressional Research Service discussing what the provisions mean based on Supreme Court decisions. It is not an official interpretation of any provision - the Court’s decisions themselves are - but it is a good very good and highly-researched resource.
One of the annexes is a list of “Supreme Court Decisions Overruled by Subsequent Decision.” (Warning! PDF!) In the most recent edition (2002), there were 220 decisions on this list. The 2004, 2006, and 2008 Supplements take this number up to 229.
In some decisions, such as Lawrence, the Court explicitly states they are reversing a prior decision. Other cases on this list are based on scholars looking at decisions and decuding that the principles announced in one overrule the principles in a prior one. Because of that, this list cannot be considered definitive, but it is at least well-researched and probably a good “simple” answer to the OP.