Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 540

Cite as: 558 U. S. 310 (2010) 

379 

Roberts, C. J., concurring 

reafﬁrming  or  extending  it,  might  better  preserve  the  law’s 
coherence and curtail the precedent’s disruptive effects. 

Likewise, if adherence to a precedent actually impedes the 
stable and orderly adjudication of future cases, its stare deci­
sis  effect  is  also  diminished.  This  can  happen  in  a  number 
of circumstances, such as when the precedent’s validity is so 
hotly contested that it cannot reliably function as a basis for 
decision  in  future  cases,  when  its  rationale  threatens  to 
upend  our  settled  jurisprudence  in  related  areas  of  law,  and 
when  the  precedent’s  underlying  reasoning  has  become  so 
discredited  that  the  Court  cannot  keep  the  precedent  alive 
without jury-rigging new and different justiﬁcations to shore 
up the original mistake.  See, e. g., Pearson v.  Callahan, 555 
U. S.  223,  235  (2009);  Montejo  v.  Louisiana,  556  U. S.  778, 
792 (2009)  (stare decisis  does not  control when  adherence to 
the prior decision requires “fundamentally revising its theo­
retical basis”). 

B 

These considerations weigh against  retaining our decision 
in Austin.  First, as the majority explains, that decision was 
an “aberration” insofar as it departed from the robust protec­
tions  we  had  granted  political  speech  in  our  earlier  cases. 
Ante,  at  355;  see  also  Buckley,  supra;  First  Nat.  Bank  of 
Boston v.  Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765 (1978).  Austin undermined 
the  careful  line  that  Buckley  drew  to  distinguish  limits  on 
contributions  to  candidates  from  limits  on  independent  ex­
penditures  on  speech.  Buckley  rejected  the  asserted  gov­
ernment  interest  in  regulating  independent  expenditures, 
concluding that “restrict[ing] the speech of some elements of 
our  society  in  order  to  enhance  the  relative  voice  of  others 
is  wholly  foreign  to  the  First  Amendment.”  424  U. S.,  at 
48–49; see also Bellotti, supra, at 790–791; Citizens Against 
Rent  Control/Coalition  for  Fair  Housing  v.  Berkeley,  454 
U. S. 290, 295 (1981).  Austin, however, allowed the Govern­
ment to prohibit these same expenditures out of concern for 
“the  corrosive  and  distorting  effects  of  immense  aggrega­