But that isn’t my most important point. This is:

c) There is a higher order–represented not by the whim of the Court, but by the Constitution. This is the final point: RRSD replaces the Constitution with the Court. The Constitution becomes the thing you rely on only when no previous court has left its fingerprints all over the issue before the judges.

Presidents–and Court justices–take oaths to uphold not the Supreme Court’s precedents, but the Constitution. The order they’re called to preserve is the constitutional order, not the order of whatever happens to be the precedential status quo.

I do understand the danger of disorder and the preference for reconciling ourselves to precedents rather than crafting each ruling as if it were 1790. Hence the various possible concessions to stare decisis above. But the relentless ardor for precedent above Constitutional ardor strikes me as more likely to produce confusion, and less likely to preserve justice and “ordered liberty,” than a more complex and more Constitution-focused understanding.

You’ve got the email link over there if ya wanna prove me wrong….