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Page Number: 49.0

2 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

so, the Court returns judges to interpretive rules that have 
guided federal courts since the Nation’s founding.  I write 
separately to address why the proper application of the doc-
trine of stare decisis supports that course. 

I 
A 
Today, the phrase “common law judge” may call to mind
a judicial titan of the past who brilliantly devised new legal 
rules on his own.  The phrase “stare decisis” might conjure
up a sense that judges who come later in time are strictly
bound to follow the work of their predecessors.  But neither 
of those intuitions fairly describes the traditional common-
law understanding of the judge’s role or the doctrine of stare 
decisis. 

At common law, a judge’s charge to decide cases was not 
usually understood as a license to make new law.  For much 
of England’s early history, different rulers and different le-
gal systems prevailed in different regions.  As England con-
solidated into a single kingdom governed by a single legal
system, the judge’s task was to examine those pre-existing 
legal traditions and apply in the disputes that came to him
those legal rules that were “common to the whole land and
to all Englishmen.”  F. Maitland, Equity, Also the Forms of
Action at Common Law 2 (1929).  That was “common law” 
judging.

This view of the judge’s role had consequences for the au-
thority due judicial decisions.  Because a judge’s job was to
find  and  apply  the  law,  not  make  it,  the  “opinion  of  the 
judge” and “the law” were not considered “one and the same
thing.”  1  W.  Blackstone,  Commentaries  on  the  Laws  of 
England  71  (1765)  (Blackstone)  (emphasis  deleted).  A 
judge’s decision might bind the parties to the case at hand.
M. Hale, The History and Analysis of the Common Law of 
England 68 (1713) (Hale).  But none of that meant the judge
had the power to “make a Law properly so called” for society