for here, unlike in the context of constitutional interpretation, the legislative power is
implicated, and Congress remains free to alter what [the courts] have done.” Shepard
v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 23 (2005) (quoting Patterson v. McLean Credit Union,
491 U.S. 164, 172-73 (1989)); see also Hilton v. S.C. Pub. Res. Comm’n, 502 U.S. 197,
205 (1991) (in cases of statutory interpretation the importance of adhering to prior
rulings is “most compelling”). Where, as here, Congress has not acted to modify the
statute in the many years since Diehr and the decisions of this court, the force of stare
decisis is even stronger. See Shepard, 544 U.S. at 23.
Adherence to settled law, resulting in settled expectations, is of particular
importance “in cases involving property and contract rights, where reliance interests are
involved.” Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 828 (1991); see also United States v.
Title Ins. & Trust Co., 265 U.S. 472, 486 (1924) (declining to overrule precedent where
prior ruling “has become a rule of property, and to disturb it now would be fraught with
many injurious results”). This rationale is given no weight by my colleagues, as this
court gratuitously disrupts decades of law underlying our own rulings. The only
announced support for today’s change appears to be the strained new reading of
Supreme Court quotations. But this court has previously read these decades-old
opinions differently, without objection by either Congress or the Court. My colleagues
do not state a reason for their change of heart. See Benjamin N. Cardozo, The Nature
of the Judicial Process 149 (1921) (“[T]he labor of judges would be increased almost to
the breaking point if every past decision could be reopened in every case, and one
could not lay one’s own course of bricks on the secure foundation of the courses laid by
others who had gone before him.”).
2007-1130
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