By: Mr. Jackson
President Barack Obama, while responding to a question about selecting a jurist to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia, used a big word — Stare Decisis
Not wanting him to “one up” me in vocabulary, I researched it. It ‘is the doctrine of precedent. Courts cite to stare decisis when an issue has been previously brought to the court and a ruling has been already issued. Stare decisis is Latin for “to stand by things decided.”
It is a maxim among lawyers, that whatever has been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
In modern jurisprudence, however, it has come to take on a life of its own, with all precedents being presumed to be well-founded, unbiased legal decisions, rather than political decisions, and presumed to have both the authority of the constitutional enactments on which they are based, plus that of the precedents on which they are based, so that later precedents are presumed to be more authoritative than earlier ones.
The problem with Stare Decisis is when a legal position falls outside of the constitutional ring of basis due to legal positions being derived from earlier ones that are partly constitutional and jurist legal opinions. This is called Stare Decisis Drift.
In the attached, Set A is based on constitutional law and Sets B – D, directly concentrically connected, are based on constitutional law due to precedence (Stare Decisis).
Set E, while outside of the concentric constitutional ring, is still given constitutional weight due to its concentric connection to Set D.
However, Set F falls completely outside of the circle and thus gives argument to those who contend that eventually Stare Decisis encourages subversion of constitutional law and all decisions thereforth based on Set F are non-constitutionally based.
It gets heavier so before I step in it, I’m quitting! (Smile)
OK Mr. President…..next word …….
