A video has been posted from Seth Hufstedler's 100th Birthday party last month here.
- “The legal doctrine of stare decisis derives from the Latin maxim ‘stare decisis et non quieta movere,’ which means to stand by the thing decided and not disturb the calm. The doctrine reflects respect for the accumulated wisdom of judges who have previously tried to solve the same problem.” Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S. Ct. 1390, 1411 (2020) (Kavanaugh, J., conc.)
- One early and classic jab at stare decisis comes from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457 (1897): “It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.”
- If stare decisis is too readily discarded, then the Constitution becomes “nothing more than what five Justices say it is” at any point in time. Justice Powell, Stare Decisis and Judicial Restraint, 1991 J. Sup. Ct. Hist. 13, 16; see also Turner v. U.S., 396 U.S. 398, 426 (1970) (Black, J., dissenting) (“Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each successive wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.”). But if stare decisis is adhered to too slavishly, then the Constitution is nothing more than what five justices once said it was at one point (perhaps in the distant past).
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