Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Page Number: 79

32 

LOPER BRIGHT ENTERPRISES v. RAIMONDO 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

But  the  job  of  reconsidering  past  decisions  remains  one 
every Member of this Court faces from time to time.8 

Justice William O. Douglas served longer on this Court 
than any other person in the Nation’s history.  During his
tenure, he observed how a new colleague might be inclined
initially to “revere” every word written in an opinion issued 
before he arrived.  W. Douglas, Stare Decisis, 49 Colum. L.
Rev. 735, 736 (1949).  But, over time, Justice Douglas re-
flected, his new colleague would “remembe[r] . . . that it is 
the Constitution which he swore to support and defend, not 
the gloss which his predecessors may have put on it.”  Ibid. 
And “[s]o he [would] com[e] to formulate his own views, re-
jecting  some  earlier  ones  as  false  and  embracing  others.” 
Ibid.    This  process  of  reexamination,  Justice  Douglas  ex-
plained,  is  a  “necessary  consequence  of  our  system”  in 
which each judge takes an oath—both “personal” and bind-
ing—to discern the law’s meaning for himself and apply it 
faithfully in the cases that come before him.  Id., at 736– 
737. 

Justice Douglas saw, too, how appeals to precedent could 
be overstated and sometimes even overwrought.  Judges, he
reflected,  would  sometimes  first  issue  “new  and  startling
decision[s],”  and  then  later  spin  around  and  “acquire  an
acute  conservatism”  in  their  aggressive  defense  of  “their 

—————— 

8 Today’s  dissenters  are  no  exceptions.    They  have  voted  to  overrule 
precedents  that  they  consider  “wrong,”  Hurst  v.  Florida,  577  U. S.  92, 
101 (2016) (opinion for the Court by SOTOMAYOR, J., joined by, inter alios, 
KAGAN, J.); Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644, 665, 675 (2015) (opinion 
for  the  Court,  joined  by,  inter  alios,  SOTOMAYOR  and  KAGAN,  JJ.);  that
conflict  with  the  Constitution’s  “original  meaning,”  Alleyne  v.  United 
States,  570  U. S.  99,  118  (2013)  (SOTOMAYOR,  J.,  joined  by,  inter  alias, 
KAGAN, J., concurring); and that have proved “unworkable,” Johnson v. 
United States, 576 U. S. 591, 605 (2015) (opinion for the Court, joined by, 
inter  alios,  SOTOMAYOR  and  KAGAN,  JJ.);  see  also  Erlinger  v.  United 
States, 602 U. S. ___, ___ (2024) (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1) 
(arguing  Apprendi  v.  New  Jersey,  530  U. S.  466  (2000),  and  the  many 
cases applying it were all “wrongly decided”).