#BROODING OMNIPRESENCE IN THE SKY SERIES#

President Trump’s recent nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch heralds urgent discussion of the importance of stare decisis. Nelson must be and now is overruled.” Where did stare decisis go? No longer may this liberty be denied to them. “Standing by that which is decided,” stare decisis, went unmentioned by Justice Kennedy in his groundbreaking Obergefell opinion, relevant though it would have been to any decision throwing aside a millennia-old definition of marriage which had-to quote Chief Justice Roberts’s dissent-“ persisted in every culture throughout human history.” For the majority, prior precedent could give way to evolving standards of decency: “The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. While being interviewed, NPR’s legal astronomer mused that the looming confirmation hearings would “hinge on a Latin term known to make first-year law students shudder in their shoes: ‘ stare decisis,’ or ‘standing by that which is decided.’” Stare decisis-a brooding omnipresence in the sky.Īfter that, stare decisis faded from public view. National Public Radio aired a report on stare decisis, which was expected to be an important litmus test for Roberts’s confirmation. President Bush had just nominated John Roberts to the Court.

By comparison, the average revolution of the legal principle of stare decisis is much shorter-it crops up in the news whenever it is time for a Republican president to fill a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court.

Halley’s Comet famously makes its pass by the earth roughly once every seventy-five years.

#BROODING OMNIPRESENCE IN THE SKY SERIES#

This essay is part of a series of advice for Judge Gorsuch.

Brooding omnipresence in the sky