Obstructing Precedent

Critics of the Supreme Court sometimes accuse the justices of disrespecting or being unfaithful to precedent—of severely undermining certain precedents while leaving them formally in place. Yet it remains unclear what exactly these criticisms mean or why they point to anything objectionable. This Article proposes that critics are often drawing attention to a particular practice: obstructing precedent. A better grasp of what obstructing precedent is and when it is legitimate is an important prerequisite to understanding the Roberts Court’s treatment of precedent in a wide range of cases.

Roughly put, a court obstructs precedent when it refuses to cooperate with its prior self in building a coherent body of law. The court reaches a holding in the instant case that cannot be justified by the same rationale—the same weighting of values or purposes—as justified its holding in the precedent case. As a result, the same institution seems over time to speak not with one voice but with multiple discordant voices that reflect no unified political vision. Over the last few years, the Roberts Court has repeatedly obstructed precedent in just this sense in cases spanning diverse areas of the law.

Those who criticize the justices for disrespecting or being unfaithful to precedent usually imply that the justices have thereby acted illegitimately. But that conclusion is too quick. There is nothing inherently illegitimate about obstructing precedent, either legally or politically; obstructing precedent can sometimes be a salutary means of gradual change. At the same time, the Court’s aggressive pattern of obstructing precedent in recent years is cause for concern, given how that pattern undermines the impersonality of the justices’ reasoning and risks further eroding public trust in the Court.