One of the most frustrating things in American politics is watching Democrats pressure conservative justices to blindly follow precedent. What they really want is for the rulings they favor to remain untouchable. We’ve had a 6-3 conservative majority in place for years, yet the scaremongering about “overturning precedent” never stops.
On Saturday, Reuters warned that the U.S. Supreme Court appears ready to rip up more of its past decisions, and you would think the sky is falling.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has given itself more opportunities in the coming months to overturn its own past rulings, a signal that its conservative justices are rethinking how much allegiance they owe to legal precedents set years ago by the nation's top judicial body,” the article began.
The article frames the Court’s willingness to reconsider prior cases as evidence of instability and a dangerous drift away from legal consistency.
A bedrock legal doctrine called "stare decisis," Latin for "to stand by things decided," calls upon courts to respect their prior precedents when resolving new cases on similar matters. A basic tenet of U.S. law is that stare decisis promotes consistency and predictability in the law.
Read between the lines: For the left, if a conservative court overturns precedent, it’s automatically a crisis. Overturning prior decisions is framed as inherently risky—a slippery slope to chaos. Courts, they insist, should follow earlier rulings.
A case being argued on Monday, involves one of the precedents now in the crosshairs before the court, whose 6-3 conservative majority has moved American law dramatically rightward in recent years including by overturning past decisions like in the 2022 case that rolled back abortion rights.
A 1935 precedent that limited presidential powers is at issue in Monday's case, a challenge to the legality of President Donald Trump's firing of an official in a federal agency set up by Congress with safeguards against presidential interference. Trump's Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to ditch the precedent, an action that would expand the Republican president's authority.
The problem with this way of thinking is that not all precedents are good. When past rulings stand on flawed logic or misinterpret the Constitution, adherence to precedent is actually a barrier to justice. The Court’s job isn’t to worship past decisions; it’s to interpret the Constitution correctly. I know that’s a hard concept for the left, but it’s true.
By casting every potential reversal as a threat to the rule of law, Reuters pushes the narrative that legal consistency is always preferable to legal correctness. That narrative overlooks how the Court, over decades, has corrected significant errors — from decisions upholding segregation to rulings that misread the structure and limits of executive power. When courts cling to bad rulings, justice becomes hostage to history.
The first example, of course, is the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) ruling, which declared that black Americans had no rights worthy of government protection. The country replaced that disgrace through the 13th and 14th Amendments, which ended slavery and established freed slaves as citizens of the United States.
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Reversing precedent has righted other moral wrongs as well. For decades, segregationists leaned on Court precedents to defend state-imposed racial separation. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which established the “separate but equal” doctrine, is widely considered one of the worst decisions in the history of the court. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) was the beginning of the end of the doctrine established by Plessy.
Despite the fact that precedents aren’t by their nature good, Reuters argues that “Whether the court in its current composition has shown enough respect for stare decisis is a matter of ongoing debate.”
The truth is that for the left, this principle of abiding by precedent is applied selectively. When a precedent aligns with their views, it’s untouchable; when it doesn’t, it becomes fair game. Do you think Democrats would argue that now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, “stare decisis” compels all courts henceforth to respect that decision? Please.
The left treats precedent like a shield when it suits them and a cudgel when it doesn’t. For conservatives, the job isn’t to bow to history—it’s to uphold the Constitution. The Court doesn’t threaten stability by reconsidering past errors; it restores justice where prior rulings got it wrong.
