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Page Number: 69.0

8 

RAMOS v. LOUISIANA 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

LLC,  576  U. S.  446,  455–456  (2015);  Payne  v.  Tennessee, 
501 U. S. 808, 827 (1991). 

B 
Under any reasonable understanding of the concept, Apo-
daca was a precedent, that is, “a decided case that furnishes 
a basis for determining later  cases involving similar facts
or issues.”  Black’s Law Dictionary 1366 (10th ed. 2014); see
also J. Salmond, Jurisprudence 191 (10th ed. 1947); M. Ger-
hardt, The Power of Precedent 3 (2008); Landes & Posner,
Legal Precedent: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, 19
J. Law & Econ. 249, 250 (1976).

Even though there was no opinion of the Court, the deci-
sion satisfies even the narrowest understanding of a prece-
dent as this Court has understood the concept: The decision
prescribes a particular outcome when all the conditions in 
a clearly defined set are met.  See Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. 
Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 67 (1996) (explaining that, at the very 
least, we are bound by the “result” in a prior case).  In Apo-
daca, this means that when (1) a defendant is convicted in 
state court, (2) at least 10 of the 12 jurors vote to convict, 
and  (3)  the  defendant  argues  that  the  conviction  violates
the Constitution because the vote was not unanimous, the 
challenge fails.  A majority of the Justices in Apodaca ex-
pressly agreed on that result, and that result is a precedent 
that had to be followed in subsequent cases until Apodaca
was overruled. 

That this result constituted a precedent follows a fortiori 
from our cases holding that even our summary affirmances 
of lower court decisions are precedents for “the precise is-
sues  presented  and  necessarily  decided”  by  the  judgment
below.  Mandel  v.  Bradley,  432  U. S.  173,  176  (1977)  (per 
curiam).  If the Apodaca Court had summarily affirmed a
state-court decision holding that a jury vote of 10 to 2 did 
not  violate  the  Sixth  Amendment,  that  summary  disposi-
tion would be a precedent.  Accordingly, it is impossible to