Title
Drawing Goal Lines: Stare Decisis and the U.S. Supreme Court
Abstract
Stare decisis, Latin for “to stand by,” is the central principle of common law.
Essentially, stare decisis conveys the idea that once the judicial system has decided
a point of law, it should adhere to that decision when the facts in subsequent cases
are similar. This is why cases set “precedents,” or in other words, why law developed
in past decisions is used to decide new ones. Many of the American judicial system’s
most famous cases – for example, Brown v. Board of Education – see the Supreme
Court reject precedent explicitly and dramatically to overrule past case law. This
leads to the common perception that precedent is simply “applied” or “overturned.”
My research takes a different view. I examined cases stemming from Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits certain kinds of discrimination in employer
hiring practices. Since the case law interpreting the new statue was created from a
clean slate, I was able to trace the entire development of precedent-setting cases
stemming from this law. My research confirms that stare decisis is not a rigid
mandate to apply or overturn precedent, but a flexible tool that justices on the
Supreme Court use to effect outcomes. Justices have personal ideologies and
political goals and must act strategically to further those goals. I examine the
development of law arising from Title VII to model this strategic action as a process of
laying down a “playing field” of basic concepts and directions in the law in the earliest
cases arising from new legislation. Subsequent decisions strategically set and reset
the “goal lines” on the “playing field,” a process in which the law often shifts
dramatically despite the fact that the principle of stare decisis is not violated.
Description
Additional contributor: Timothy Johnson (faculty mentor).
Suggested Citation
Hart, Andrew M..
(2010).
Drawing Goal Lines: Stare Decisis and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy,
https://hdl.handle.net/11299/61950.