Stare Decisis is a Latin phrase and a legal term which translates into “let the decision stand” referring to the decisions made by courts and their impact on the Common Law. Essentially, it means that courts must abide by prior rulings. They can’t just decide to not follow prior rulings or arbitrarily change them. This is how and why case law is relevant for attorneys; you can cite cases decided by higher courts to support your arguments and the courts are bound to them.
Taken to its fullest extent, Stare Decisis would mean that old case law would always be relevant and applicable. Obviously, this isn’t true since we all know that courts can and have reversed decisions before, such as with Roe v. Wade. Still, courts cannot just decide to stop following prior decisions nor can they reverse them, and of course this is still subject to the hierarchy of courts (Trial Courts cannot impact any of these decisions, Appellate Courts may only modify their own decisions, and Supreme Courts may modify any decisions in their jurisdiction).
You probably know most of what I said (perhaps aside from some of the specific nuances) if you paid attention in your government/civics class. What you probably don’t know is that most of that is, effectively, completely untrue.
Courts can reverse or later decisions, under certain circumstances. Most obviously, they can find certain decisions unconstitutional and reverse them completely.1
However, they can also determine that a ruling was in error (often a lot of overlap with being unconstitutional, but not always) which essentially means that there is some sort of flaw in the previous decision, as was part of the rationale for overturning Roe v. Wade. Additionally, courts may alter prior decisions to accommodate modern life. Sometimes this is a result of technological advancements indirectly (or even directly, in some cases) making a previous ruling outdated.2 At other times, this may be the result of social/cultural changes which make a previous ruling outdated.
“we always have treated stare decisis as a ‘principle of policy,’ […] and not as an ‘inexorable command,’”3
Now this all isn’t really that surprising. Obviously bad rulings should be thrown out and, if necessary, redone. Similarly, technological and societal development necessitates constant legal evolution to keep up with the change. But there are some very important takeaways here:
First, if you are a libtard, this means that the common law is basically entirely in the hands of just a few people who are often not even elected (depending on your state). A freaking unwholesome oligarchorino!!!
Second, if you are based and red-pilled, this means that the common law is basically entirely up for grabs. The official reasoning for Brown v. Board of Education was that Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional, which is nominally in line with idea that courts can’t make unconstitutional rulings, and makes sense. But the precise reasoning for why Plessy v. Ferguson is unconstitutional is because the “sperate but equal” doctrine is inherently unequal, and thus in conflict with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But this is literally the exact opposite of what the Court decided in Plessy v. Ferguson, which explicitly stated that segregation was not inherently unequal and would not violate the Equal Protection Clause so long as they were truly equal.
But, you may ask, did the Court have good reason to change their mind? It doesn’t matter!! There is not binding some legal theory based on explicit language within the Constitution. I’m not really going to get in the weeds of the segregation debate, but it essentially boils down to the fact that in Brown the Court decided it was an infringement on freedom of association… except freedom of association was also the basic idea behind segregation. Where Brown saw segregation as preventing people from associating if they wanted to, Plessy saw segregation as the people’s right to choose who they did or did not associate with. Point being: both arguments are equally valid and suffer from the same issues. Someone is having their freedom of association infringed, however minorly, either way. Strictly speaking, there really isn’t anything stopping SCOTUS from going back to Brown and deciding that it, too, was unconstitutional and reversing it.
Obviously they won’t do that, but I say all this to illustrate the fact that ultimately a court can reverse their previous decisions if they contrive a good enough reason to do so. Which, when you give that sort of power to the best attorneys in the region, is essentially the same as saying they can do whatever they want. It’s just a matter of window dressing really.
And so it ultimately comes down to whether or not the judges in question can be trusted to do what is right by the people. In the case of Brown, that decision was extremely unpopular as we all know. I don’t know that I would really even be willing to say that this is a case where the judges were doing what is objectively right and the people were just wrong, democratic principles aside. Because, as I mentioned earlier, not matter what side of the Plessy/Brown fence you fall on, either way it infringes on the individual’s freedom of association. So, in my mind, they really should have just abstained from making a decision since someone’s toes were getting stepped on no matter what, and the majority opinion was decidedly in favor of segregation. Also, segregation was cool and good. Just figured I’d throw that out there in case any normies are reading this.
Anyway, this ties in to something that
sort of alluded to in a recent note:What Plato is saying here is essentially that leaders have to be of a certain moral fiber and skillset for society to excel. When those leaders stop being the best and/or most moral, society starts to flounder. Now the mechanics are this are pretty varied; sometimes a new class of people worms their way into the aristocracy, sometimes the aristocracy is subverted entirely, etc. I’m not going to get in to all the details of this, because (as I mentioned in the replies to this note) I have plans for a much longer and more detailed post talking about this. I also want to get out the fabled “Defense of the Enlightenment” article out before this, which I assure you is in the works!!! It’s just that you all wanted a Defense of Soy Wars first…
Anyway, I will give you a brief run down of what I will argue for in the post:
You must first understand that the Roman Republic was the peak of Roman society, which is why many Roman Conservatives like Cato the Elder bemoaned the Empire and longed to return to the Republic (
has talked about this frequently, I will go in to more detail in this future post).You must further understand that the Empire was also necessary to save Rome at all, because the people were becoming increasingly decadent and it was destroying the Republic, which had no defense against this issue.
This is essentially what Plato is alluding to in the example Layne provided, which becomes especially clear when read together with his other work.
Thus, you come to realize that good people can make any system of government work, and that bad people can make any system of government fail.
It then becomes necessary to create a system of government which is primarily dedicated to two things: the cultivation of truly aristocratic people and the prevention of decadence.
To this end, each system of government has strengths in each category and weaknesses in the other.
As it relates to Layne’s note, it means that if you are thinking this way (which I think a fair few of us are) then you are not actually “arguing in circles about governance” but instead trying to figure out a way to, essentially, keep good people in and bad people out.
I plan to go in to far greater detail about each point I mention here, including specific sources and more formal arguments, and to address some of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each system of governance, and potentially theorycraft my solution.
I don’t know when that post will be out though, since it will obviously be very long and, like I said, will be after the Enlightenment Post. There are also some smaller posts that I’ve had in drafts for a while that I would really just like to get out there. I’m not one to drop an idea for an article once I have it, I just have to prioritize them based on the amount of research required compared to the length of the post and how important of a message I think it has.
"You must further understand that the Empire was also necessary to save Rome at all, because the people were becoming increasingly decadent and it was destroying the Republic, which had no defense against this issue."
Hmmmm, sounds very familiar to what we are seeing in the United States (along with the rest of the Western world) today. There are no safeguards and the constitution that was supposed to protect us has been circumvented by what I like to call technicality lawfare.
"Oh, you don't want a million illegal aliens dumped on your small town? Well technically the 14th amendment says that anyone born here is a US citizen so once those aliens have children who cares."
Despite the fact that said amendment was created for the sole purpose of granting citizenship to freed slaves only.
A lot of quite well read people have suggested to me that the Republic is more of a fantastical approach to society because it is an allegory for the soul, while the Laws is a more brass tacks book about what society should be run like