Deep-Six Stare Decisis

ArticleVBlog ^ | July 8th 2019 | Rodney Dodsworth

[Jacquerie]

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 unconstitutional precedent.

[snip]

How did this unwritten principle, stare decisis, evolve into a code superior to our written Constitution? In fits and starts beginning in the 16th century, English jurists attempted to keep track of and catalog Parliamentary law, Crown decrees and judicial findings. The English, not having a written constitution, relied on past decisions, the common law. One legal historian described precedent as “the fiber of which the common law was woven, and English judges did not like to unravel the mantle of judicial authority.”¹ In kingdoms without a written constitution the stare decisis principle necessarily casts a wide net.

Yet something is very wrong when Supreme Court precedent, on the principle of stare decisis, supersedes the Constitution. The Leftist/Media complex know the rickety scaffolds of Scotus decisions, and not the Constitution or statutory law, buttress their spurious victories over the Constitution. Their Roe v. Wade decision is so awful that democrat congresses backed up by democrat presidents never pressed for a statute legalizing abortion across our nation. Wickard v. Filburn (1941) constitutionalized the New Deal and green-lighted the Administrative State, whose offspring, the Deep State, threatens our republican existence. The list goes on.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Yes, I believe he did. I think he is a Ninth Amendment respecting jurist. But those are thin on the ground. Too many judges think that the First Amendment is a ceiling over our rights, not - as the Ninth asserts, a floor under them.

[Jacquerie]

<>Too many judges think that the First Amendment is a ceiling over our rights, not - as the Ninth asserts, a floor under them.<>

Quotable and exactly right.

Progressing the Constitution - The Ninth Amendment Part V.