I’m a teeny bit suspicious

Seems like a pretty big oversight, yes?

Red light warning

Photo by Joey Banks on Unsplash

From Justice Stephen Breyer. They’re coming for abortion rights, in case you couldn’t tell. Via NBC News:

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer warned Monday that his colleagues might be too eager to overturn earlier rulings that he said deserve respect as established precedent, mentioning a key abortion ruling as one of them.

“The law can retain the necessary stability only if this court resists that temptation, overruling prior precedent only when the circumstances demand it,” Breyer wrote.

His comments came in a dissent as the court, by a 5-4 vote, ruled that a state cannot be sued in the courts of a different state unless it gives its permission. The ruling came in a taxpayer lawsuit filed in Nevada against California.

Overturning a 40-year-old precedent, the Supreme Court said the Constitution does not allow lawsuits against the states without their consent. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said state immunity is an essential part of federalism.

But Breyer said the ruling caused him “to wonder which cases the court will overrule next.”

He said overturning longstanding precedent requires a special justification, beyond a finding that an earlier court got something wrong. “[L]ater-appointed judges may come to believe that earlier-appointed judges made just such an error … ” he wrote. “But the law can retain the necessary stability only if this court resists that temptation.”

https://twitter.com/LeahLitman/status/1128096913591398401

32 flavors

I met Ani DiFranco many years ago at the Philly Folk Festival. She’d just done an astounding set, and was struggling up the hill with a couple boxes of her CDs. So I helped her carry them. Brush with greatness!