Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 74.0

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

13 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

But many important decisions currently regarded as prece-
dents were decided without an opinion of the Court.18  Does 
the majority mean to suggest that all such precedents are
fair game?

The majority’s primary reason for overruling Apodaca is 
the  supposedly  poor  “quality”  of  Justice  White’s  plurality 
opinion and Justice Powell’s separate opinion.  Ante, at 19– 
21.  The  majority  indicts  Justice  White’s  opinion  on  five
grounds: (1) it “spent almost no time grappling with the his-
torical  meaning  of  the  Sixth  Amendment’s  jury  trial 
right,”19 (2) it did not give due weight to the “Court’s long-
repeated statements that [the right] demands unanimity,”20 
(3)  it  did  not  take  into  account  “the  racist  origins  of  [the] 
Louisian[a] and Orego[n] laws,”21 (4) it looked to the func-
tion of the jury-trial right,22 and (5) it engaged in “a breezy 
cost-benefit  analysis”  that,  in  any  event,  did  not  properly 

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do  not  join  Part  IV–A,  but  each  of  these  Justices  takes  a  position  not
embraced by portions of the principal opinion that they join.  See ante, at 
2  (SOTOMAYOR,  J.,  concurring  in  part)  (disavowing  principal  opinion’s 
criticism of Justice White’s Apodaca opinion as “functionalist”); ante, at 
15–17 (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part) (opining that the decision in 
this  case  does  not  apply  on  collateral  review).    And  JUSTICE  THOMAS 
would decide the case on entirely different grounds and thus concurs only
in the judgment.  See ante, at 1. 

18 See,  e.g.,  National  Federation  of  Independent  Business v.  Sebelius, 
567 U. S. 519 (2012); Williams v. Illinois, 567 U. S. 50 (2012); J. McIntyre 
Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro, 564 U. S. 873 (2011); McDonald v. Chicago, 
561 U. S. 742 (2010); Shady Grove Orthopedic Associates, P. A. v. Allstate 
Ins. Co., 559 U. S. 393 (2010); Baze v. Rees, 553 U. S. 35 (2008); Crawford 
v.  Marion  County  Election  Bd.,  553  U. S.  181  (2008);  Hamdan  v. 
Rumsfeld,  548  U. S.  557  (2006); Medtronic,  Inc. v.  Lohr,  518  U. S.  470 
(1996); Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469 (1989); Bakke, 438 
U. S. 265; Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153 (1976) (joint opinion of Stew-
art, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). 

19 Ante, at 20. 
20 Ante, at 21. 
21 Ibid. 
22 Ibid.