Nothing New: Sotomayor Wrong On Precedent

I recently called out lib Justice Sotomayor for suggesting the High Court's opinions should take public sentiment into account. But, WSJ likewise trashed her anti-conservative majority view that it is overturning precedents in unprecedented fashion.

It just aint’ so, the paper’s editorial board opined in “Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s Elegy for Precedent.” While she keeps claiming “the Supreme Court is rushing to overturn old cases … the figures say the opposite.” Sotomayor’s latest false rap on her conservative colleagues going as overboard on new case law as a woke activist justice like herself, was delivered recently at Louisville U’s law school: “I think my court would probably gather more public support if it went a little more slowly in undoing precedent” …  because the public doesn’t like it when the Justices move “too quickly in upheavals.”

Yet, as the editors pointed out, “in seven of his 19 years … the Roberts Court upended a single precedent & none at all in four of those terms.” In contrast, the WSJ notes, the rate of “precedent alteration” under liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953-69) averaged 3.1 cases per year. Then came Chief Justice Warren Burger (1969-86) with 3.4 per year. Under President Reagan & his Chief Justice Rehnquist (1986-2005), the figure fell to 2.4. Not even close in comparison. It's true that the current Supreme Court has recently overturned a liberal sacred cow, the Roe v Wade abortion case that’s been “debated for almost 50 years.” But, as the editors remind, all the majority did was get the federal government out of the abortion business & put it back in the hands of the states where it originally presided before the Roe court overturned IT.

Davd Soul