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Many people say, "It says what it says and that's the way it is." Fine, but two people can read the same thing and reach different conclusions.

Stare decisis is just fine for deciding which of several reasonable interpretations should be used. Unfortunately, it is being used--illegitimately--far beyond that.

Perhaps someone needs to codify, whether by statute or constitutional amendment, what should already be--but isn't--practiced: Any court decision, in order to be valid, should be supportable without any reference whatsoever to stare decisis. This does not mean decisions should be made without regard to stare decisis, but they must be reasonable even without it.

I would further add another rule: No person shall be punished by the government, whether civilly or criminally, for any action in a manner beyond what a responsible and knowledgeable citizen would expect to have happen if caught.

This would have a few corrolaries:

Ignorance of the law should be an excuse when (and generally only when) even knowledgeable people don't know what the law is.
If someone can demonstrate that the government knowingly fails to enforce a law in some particular circumstance, such failire should render the law unenforceable unless the government can demonstrate that the defendant's conduct was materially worse than the conduct the government was ignoring. [Example: if a cop allows motorists to pass at 62mph in a 55mph zone, the cop should not be allowed to ticket someone going 56mph (assuming similar road conditions), but should be allowed to pull over someone going 90mph.]
If a reasonable and widely-understood interpretation of a statute is found to be incorrect, the fact that the wrong interpretation was widely and reasonably held should be a bar to the prosecution of anyone who acts upon such an interpretation prior to such finding.

Unfortunately, the above principles are not part of common practice, and this lack causes great damage both directly and indirectly. Directly, by causing people to charged with doing things that were widely believed to be legal, and indirectly by pressuring courts to establish bad precedents in an effort to decide individual cases directly.

For example, in Lawrence v. Texas, I would expect the defendants could have provided evidence that the state of Texas made little or no effort to prosecute individuals who engaged in sodomy 'discretely', even when police had reason to believe it was going on. The defendants could argue that, being aware of this, they had no reason to believe their activities would be of interest to the state. The state would then have to show some reason why the defendants should have been aware that their activities would arouse state interest.

My personal suspicion (just a hunch) is that the defendants were deliberately responsible for the burglary report. If that could be shown, they should be convicted. Such decision-making, however, should be the function of a jury.

BTW, one more thing I'd like to see as a legal practice change: make it 'acceptable' for a court to dismiss a case without prejudice and publicly state some acceptable arguments. There clearly were IMHO some arguments the Lawrence defendants should have been able to use that should have resulted in a remand, but they didn't use them. Had the Court told the defendants what arguments to use, the Court would then have been able to accept the defendants' case based on those arguments without setting bad precedent, or--if the defendants refused to offer such arguments--upheld the prosecution while making clear that the defendants--not the Court--were to blame.