Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 63.0

2 

RAMOS v. LOUISIANA 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

verdicts to be constitutional and even though there are en-
tirely legitimate arguments for allowing them. 

I would not overrule Apodaca.  Whatever one may think 
about  the  correctness  of  the  decision,  it  has  elicited  enor-
mous  and  entirely  reasonable  reliance.  And  before  this 
Court decided to intervene, the decision appeared to have 
little  practical  importance  going  forward.  Louisiana  has 
now  abolished  non-unanimous  verdicts,  and  Oregon 
seemed  on  the  verge  of  doing  the  same  until  the  Court 
intervened.1 

In  Part  II  of  this  opinion,  I  will  address  the  surprising 
argument, advanced by three Justices in the majority, that 
Apodaca was never a precedent at all, and in Part III, I will 
explain why stare decisis supports retention of that prece-
dent.  But before reaching those issues, I must say some-
thing about the rhetoric with which the majority has seen
fit to begin its opinion. 

I 

Too much public discourse today is sullied by ad hominem 
rhetoric, that is, attempts to discredit an argument not by
proving that it is unsound but by attacking the character or 
motives of the argument’s proponents.  The majority regret-
tably succumbs to this trend.  At the start of its opinion, the
majority asks this rhetorical question: “Why do Louisiana
and Oregon allow nonunanimous convictions?”  Ante, at 1. 
And the answer it suggests?  Racism, white supremacy, the 
Ku Klux Klan.  Ante, at 1–2.  Non-unanimous verdicts, the 
Court implies, are of a piece with Jim Crow laws, the poll 
tax,  and  other  devices  once  used  to  disfranchise  African-
Americans.  Ibid. 

If  Louisiana  and  Oregon  originally  adopted  their  laws
allowing non-unanimous verdicts for these reasons,2 that is 

—————— 

1 See Brief for State of Oregon as Amicus Curiae 1–2. 
2 Both States resist this suggestion.  See Brief for Respondent 36–39; 

Brief for State of Oregon as Amicus Curiae 6–8.