Court Opinion

ID: 9428205
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:07.617169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:12.232025
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
concurring.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is in square conflict with this Court’s holding in Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651. Apparently recognizing this fact, respondents urge the Court to grant certiorari and hear argument on the question whether Edelman should be overruled.1 I find this question less easily answered than do my Brothers, all of whom were Members of the Court when Edelman was decided. Each has voted today consistently with his vote in Edelman itself.
The arguments in favor of overruling Edelman are appealing, particularly because I share the opinion of Justice Brennan, Justice Marshall, and Justice Blackmun that Edelman was incorrectly decided.2 I have previously relied *152on rather slender grounds for distinguishing Edelman,3 when wiser judges might have forthrightly urged rejection of the precedent.4 And I joined the Court’s decision to overrule Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167, insofar as it concerned the financial responsibility of municipal corporations. See Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U. S. 658, 714 (Stevens, J., concurring in part). Moreover, the reflections of some former Members of the Court on the doctrine of stare decisis suggest that they would not have hesitated to overrule a decision that stands as an impediment to providing an adequate remedy for citizens injured by their government.5 Nevertheless, I find greater force in the countervailing arguments.
First, I would note that Edelman did not announce a rule of law fundamentally at odds with our current understanding of the scope of constitutionally protected civil rights,6 *153nor did it rest upon a discredited interpretation of the relevant historical documents.7 Rather, the rule of the Edel-man case is of only limited significance and has been a part of our law for only a few years. Its limiting effect on the jurisdiction of federal courts is not so restrictive that Congress may not mitigate its impact by unambiguously conditioning state participation in federal programs on a waiver of the Eleventh Amendment defense. The Edelman rule represents an interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment that had previously been endorsed by some of our finest Circuit Judges;8 it therefore cannot be characterized as unreasonable or egregiously incorrect.9
Of even greater importance, however, is my concern about the potential damage to the legal system that may be caused by frequent or sudden reversals of direction that may appear to have been occasioned by nothing more significant than a change in the identity of this Court’s personnel.10 Granting that a zigzag is sometimes the best course,11 I am firmly convinced that we have a profound obligation to give recently decided cases the strongest presumption of validity. That *154presumption is supported by much more than the desire to foster an appearance of certainty and impartiality in the administration of justice, or the interest in facilitating the labors of judges.12 The presumption is an essential thread in the mantle of protection that the law affords the individual. Citizens must have confidence that the rules on which they rely in ordering their affairs — particularly when they are prepared to take issue with those in power in doing so— are rules of law and not merely the opinions of a small group of men who temporarily occupy high office.13 It is the unpopular or beleaguered individual — not the man in power— who has the greatest stake in the integrity of the law.14
*155For me, the adverse consequences of adhering to an arguably erroneous precedent in this case are far less serious than the consequences of further unravelling the doctrine of stare decisis. I therefore join the Court’s disposition.

 Respondents initially argued that the Court of Appeals’ decision was distinguishable from Edelman and that certiorari therefore should be denied. However, after the Solicitor General, on behalf of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, recommended that the Court grant cer-tiorari and summarily reverse the lower court’s decision, respondents requested that the Court instead grant certiorari and consider overruling Edelman. See Supplemental Brief for Respondent Nursing Homes 4-13.

 In 1972,1 sat as a member of a three-judge District Court that rejected essentially the same Eleventh Amendment argument that the Court accepted in Edelman. See Mothers and Childrens Rights Organization v. Sterrett, No. 70 F. 138 (ND Ind., Apr. 14, 1972), summarily aff’d, 409 *152U. S. 809; cited in Edelman, 415 U. S., at 670, n. 13. I am therefore quite certain that I would have joined Justice Marshall’s dissent if I had been a Member of the Court when Edelman was decided.

 See Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U. S. 445, 458-460 (Stevens, J., concurring).

 In his 1949 Cardozo lecture, Justice Douglas stated:
“The idea that any body of law, particularly public law, should appear to stay put and not be in flux is an interesting phenomenon that Frank has explored in Law and the Modern Mind. He points out how it is — in law and in other fields too — that men continue to chant of the immutability of a rule in order to 'cover up the transformation, to deny the reality of change, to conceal the truth of adaptation behind a verbal disguise of fixity and universality.’ But the more blunt, open, and direct course is truer to democratic traditions. It reflects the candor of Cardozo. The principle of full disclosure has as much place in government as it does in the market place. A judiciary that discloses what it is doing and why it does it will breed understanding. And confidence based on understanding is more enduring than confidence based on awe.” W. Douglas, Stare Decisis 30-31 (1949) (footnote omitted).

 See W. Douglas, supra; A. Goldberg, Equal Justice: The Warren Era of the Supreme Court 67-97 (1971).

 Cf. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, 489-495, overruling Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537.

 Cf. Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64, 71-73, overruling Swift v. Tyson, 16 Pet. 1.

 The opinion in Rothstein v. Wyman, 467 F. 2d 226, 228 (CA2 1972), which adopted the interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment subsequently approved by this Court in Edelman, was written by Judge McGowan (sitting by designation) and was joined by Chief Judge Friendly and Judge Timbers. See 415 U. S., at 66A-665, 666, n. 11.

 The principal justifications for refusing to apply the doctrine of stare decisis in Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Services, 436 U. S. 658; see id., at 695-701, are therefore not available in this case.

 Scholars have suggested that the identity of the Court’s personnel was a factor underlying the decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S. 833, 853-855, to overrule Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U. S. 183. See, e. g., J. Nowak, J. Young, & R. Rotunda, Constitutional Law 159-163 (1978).

 See, e. g., West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, overruling Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U. S. 586.

 These concerns are not, however, insubstantial:
“[T]he labor of judges would be increased almost to the breaking point if every past decision could be reopened in every case, and one could not lay one’s own course of bricks on the secure foundation of the courses laid by others who had gone before him.” B. Caxdozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 149 (1921).

 This, of course, is not a novel suggestion. As the first Justice White noted in his dissent in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., 157 U. S. 429, 652:
“The fundamental conception of a judicial body is that of one hedged about by precedents which are binding on the court without regard to the personality of its members. Break down this belief in judicial continuity, and let it be felt that on great constitutional questions this court is to depart from the settled conclusions of its predecessors, and to determine them all according to the mere opinion of those who temporarily fill its bench, and our Constitution will, in my judgment, be bereft of value and become a most dangerous instrument to the rights and liberties of the people.”

 The Chief Justice recently reminded us of this fact by quoting a statement ascribed to Sir Thomas More:
“This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — Man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down . . . d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? . . . Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.” See TVA v. Hill, 437 U. S. 153, 195, quoting R. Bolt, A Man for All Seasons, Act I, p. 147 (Three Plays, Heinemann ed. 1967).