Court Opinion

ID: 9836893
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 03:15:25.210265+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:19.191455
License: Public Domain

CRAWFORD, Chief Judge
(concurring):
The Court of Criminal Appeals erred by failing properly to apply United States v. Harris, 19 MJ 331 (CMA 1985), to the facts of this case. While readily conceding the applicability of stare decisis to this case’s resolution, I write again to remind our lower courts that the doctrine is not a talisman to which blind allegiance must be given. See United States v. Boyett, 42 MJ 150 (1995); United States v. Allbery, 44 MJ 226, 230 (1996) (Crawford, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
When considering precedent and its applicability to any case under deliberation, a lower court’s initial touchstone is the facts, and perhaps the scope of prevailing conditions, which gave rise to the preceding judgment. This is particularly true in cases that involve evidentiary and procedural rules. See Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808, 828, 111 S.Ct. 2597, 115 L.Ed.2d 720 (1991). As Justice Brandéis cogently explains in the dissenting opinion cited by the majority:
In the cases which now come before us there is seldom any dispute as to the interpretation of any provision. The controversy is usually over the application to existing conditions of some well-recognized constitutional limitation.
Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393, 410, 52 S.Ct. 443, 76 L.Ed. 815 (1932).
The forum for initiating a new or different application of facts to existing law is the trial court. The bellwether to bring changed conditions to the forefront should be either the trial or defense counsel.
Stare decisis need not lead to an “imprisonment of reason”1 when facts or percep*233tions, or even underlying assumptions, have changed; there is a showing that a particular decision is unworkable;2 there have been intervening developments in the law, public policy, or social trends;3 or the historical analysis underlying the precedent was wrong.4 One could also argue that cases decided by a narrow margin by this or other appellate courts should have less prece-dential value than unanimous ones.5
It is one thing to give precedent an “unceremonious ‘heave-ho’ ” without thoughtful consideration. See Harper v. Virginia Department of Taxation, 509 U.S. 86, 108-09, 113 S.Ct. 2510, 125 L.Ed.2d 74 (1993) (Scalia, J., concurring)(quoting Earl M. Maltz, Some Thoughts on the Death of Stare Decisis in Constitutional Law, 1980 Wis.L.Rev. 467); see also Lee, supra, (n. 2 below) at 648. It is quite another to jettison law when the circumstances have changed and a former approach “must bow ‘to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning.’” Solorio v. United States, 483 U.S. 435, 450, 107 S.Ct. 2924, 97 L.Ed.2d 364 (1987)(quoting Burnet, supra at 406-08, 52 S.Ct. 443 (Brandeis, J., dissenting)).
Our lower military tribunals are neither free to ignore mandates from this Court, nor to avoid the application of settled principles of law to future cases where the facts are substantially similar. However, these courts, and the parties who litigate before them, must ensure that military law continues to develop in both a principled and intelligent manner so our court can “bring its opinions into agreement with experience and with facts newly ascertained.” Vasquez v. Hil-lery, 474 U.S. 254, 265-66, 106 S.Ct. 617, 88 L.Ed.2d 598 (1986)(quoting Burnet, supra at
259, 99 L.Ed. 290 (1955)(Frankfurter, J., dissenting).
412, 52 S.Ct. 443 (Brandeis, J., dissenting)); see Maltz, supra at 470.

. See United States v. International Boxing Club of New York, Inc., 348 U.S. 236, 249, 75 S.Ct.

. See, e.g., United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556 (1993), overruling Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (1990), and reverting to the test under Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932), when examining Double Jeopardy Clause matters. See Thomas R. Lee, Stare Decisis in Historical Perspective: From the Founding Era to the Rehnquist Court, 52 Vand. L.Rev. 647 (1999).

. See William N. Eskridge, Jr., Overruling Statutory Precedents, 76 Geo. L.J. 361 (1988).

. See Solorio v. United States, 483 U.S. 435, 107 S.Ct. 2924, 97 L.Ed.2d 364 (1987), overruling O’Callahan v. Parker, 395 U.S. 258, 89 S.Ct. 1683, 23 L.Ed.2d 291 (1969).

. See Payne v. Tennessee, supra; cf. Mark Alan Thurman, Note, When The Court Divides: Reconsidering the Precedential Value of Supreme Court Plurality Decisions, 42 Duke L.J. 419 (1992).