“No, it is not. A lower court ruling that homosexual marriage is foreign to the US Constitution would be overturned in minutes. “
Actually there is NOTHING that demands it other than a court that is unchanged from the court that made that decision. There were dissenters on the court to that decision, and some of them are still on the court, and neither of Trump’s picks have had to put a Supreme Court justices thinking to the matter.
Any precedent can be argued against, in a lower court, and, nothing DEMANDS the argument be rejected at the Supreme Court. It is up the court - the sitting justices there at the time the lower court case arrives. By remaking the composition of the court, we have the chance of overturning different precedents.
MY CASE is the ability is there in the process, but Kavanaugh is not going to be Conservative enough, constitutionalist enough to be part of it. He has argued in the past, within his case history, that precedents are “the supreme law of the land”. They are not. If they were, if they could not be overturned, segregation laws by state & local governments would still be legal.
The Supreme Court can over-rule themselves. A lower court cannot overrule the Supreme Court. That is why it is called “Supreme”.
A lower court can eat around the edges, arguing a precedent doesn’t really apply. THEN the Supreme Court may overturn their own precedence.
But yes, a lower court has a requirement to give way to higher court rulings.