Supreme Court after 191 years, is crusading to reverse what she says is an alarming decline in America’s knowledge of democracy and announced an initiative Wednesday to educate children across the country.Īsserting that democracy is not inherited at birth but rather learned in school, O’Connor founded the educational nonprofit group iCivics in 2009 to secure America’s governance and prepare the next generation of citizens and leaders.
Departure from precedent is exceptional and requires special justification."Ī.ěased on what you read, why is adhering to precedent (or stare decisis) important?ī.Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the U.S. For this reason, the rule of law demands that adhering to our prior case law be the norm. Stare decisis thereby avoids the instability and unfairness that accompany disruption of settled legal expectations. The Court has pointed out that stare decisis 'promotes the evenhanded, predictable and consistent development of legal principles, fosters reliance on judicial decisions, and contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process.'
"The Court has often recognized the 'fundamental importance' of stare decisis, the basic legal principle that commands judicial respect for a court's earlier decisions and the rules of law they embody. Sorrell, the Vermont campaign finance reform decision, 2006: Stephen Breyer, writing for the Court in Randall v. Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and evenhandedness." I do think it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent. Whether or not particular precedents have proved to be unworkable is another consideration on the other side. "The principles of stare decisis look at a number of factors. Senate confirmation hearing, September 2005: But five people have to agree it was wrong then and it's wrong now and it's causing a lot of harm to the point where even though people have to plan their lives, we better get rid of it. So, of course, sometimes you have to overturn a case. Now, if you said never overturn a case, we'd still live in a society that had racial segregation. They have to both think it was wrong and think it's harmful and causing a lot of trouble. So no one thinks just because a case is wrong that you are going to overturn it.
SANDRA DAY O CONNOR QUOTES HOW TO
They can't plan how to live they can't plan their societies. Every one of us understands that if you change the law too often, even when it was wrong before, people cannot live their lives. So what standard is required? It's just a standard of persuading at least five members of the Court that an earlier precedent is clearly wrong and shouldn't remain the law of the nation." The members of this Court unanimously concluded that just was not valid and it overturned it, You know, the same school, one for people of the black race, one for people of the white race. Ferguson principle that you could have separate public facilities for people based on race, provided they were roughly the same. Board of Education when the Supreme Court decided to overrule the old Plessy v. We can be persuaded at times that something we decided earlier has become, over time, no longer defensible.Īnd the most clear big example of that was in Brown v. "Well, I think you have to be able to persuade at least five members of this nine-member Court that an earlier judgment and opinion decided by this Court is now clearly wrong. When asked about what might influence the justices to overturn a precedent, Justice O'Connor said: This interview was filmed at the Supreme Court and can be found at "Supreme Court Q and A," 2005, Breyer participated in a taped interview with students in a question-and-answer session sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. In June 2005, Justices Sandra Day O'Conner and Stephen G. When all three of you finished reading the quotes, explain them to one another and then work together to answer the questions at the bottom of the handout. Then try to put the quote in your own words or summarize it.ģ. Circle words or passages that you have questions about. As you read them, underline passages you think are particularly important. (If necessary, you can double up and have two of you working on the same quote.)Ģ. Divide up the quotes below so you each have the same number of quotes to work with. You will be working with two other students on this assignment.ġ. WHAT THE JUSTICES THINK ABOUT PRECEDENT AND STARE DECISIS
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