What Supreme Court’s jettisoning of precedent may mean for future
Earlier this week the conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court voted to scrap a legal rule that, while decades old, had never really been used.
On the surface it may not seem like a radical move – the judicial equivalent of canceling a gym membership you never use. The so-called watershed exception – that criminal rules don’t apply retroactively unless they represent a major procedural change – had never been applied in its 32-year history, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the court’s majority opinion.
But on closer examination, and in the context of other actions the court took this week, scrapping the watershed exception suggests that the court – in particular its conservative wing – has a more gung-ho attitude toward overturning precedent than in the past.
Respect for precedent is a founding
“A lot of wiggle room”When does precedent get overturned?
