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20 

RAMOS v. LOUISIANA 

Opinion of the Court 

repeated  pre-existing  teachings  on  the  Sixth  and  Four-
teenth Amendments.56 

B 
1 

There’s  another  obstacle  the  dissent  must  overcome. 
Even if we accepted the premise that Apodaca established 
a precedent, no one on the Court today is prepared to say it 
was rightly decided, and stare decisis isn’t supposed to be
the art of methodically ignoring what everyone knows to be 
true.57  Of course, the precedents of this Court warrant our 
deep  respect  as  embodying  the  considered  views  of  those
who  have  come  before.   But  stare  decisis  has  never  been 
treated as “an inexorable command.”58  And the doctrine is 
“at  its  weakest  when  we  interpret  the  Constitution”59  be-
cause  a  mistaken  judicial  interpretation  of  that  supreme 
law is often “practically impossible” to correct through other 
means.60  To balance these considerations, when it revisits 
a  precedent  this  Court  has  traditionally  considered  “the
quality of the decision’s reasoning; its consistency with re-
lated decisions; legal developments since the decision; and 
reliance on the decision.”61  In this case, each factor points 

—————— 

56 The  dissent  floats  a  different  theory  when  it  suggests  this  Court’s 
denials  of  certiorari  in  cases  seeking  to  clarify  Apodaca  is  evidence  of 
Apodaca’s precedential force.  Post, at 7.  But “[t]he significance of a de-
nial  of  a  petition  for  certiorari  ought  no  longer  . . .  require  discussion. 
This Court has said again and again and again that such a denial has no
legal significance whatever bearing on the merits of the claim.”  Darr v. 
Burford, 339 U. S. 200, 226 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). 

57 R. Cross & J. Harris, Precedent in English Law 1 (4th ed. 1991) (at-

tributing this aphorism to Jeremy Bentham). 

58 Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 233 (2009) (internal  quotation 

marks omitted). 

59 Agostini v. Felton, 521 U. S. 203, 235 (1997). 
60 Payne  v.  Tennessee,  501  U. S.  808,  828  (1991)  (internal  quotation 

marks omitted). 

61 Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Hyatt, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., 

at 17).