The Modes of Constitutional Analysis: Judicial Precedent (Part 4)

"This Legal Sidebar Post is the fourth in a nine-part series that discusses certain “methods” or “modes” of analysis that the Supreme Court has employed to determine the meaning of a provision within the Constitution. (For additional background on this topic and citations to relevant sources, please see CRS Report R45129, Modes of Constitutional Interpretation).

The Supreme Court’s prior decisions on questions of constitutional law are the most commonly cited source of the Constitution’s meaning. For most Justices, if not all, judicial precedent provides possible principles, rules, or standards to govern judicial decisions in future cases with arguably similar facts. Although the Court routinely purports to rely upon precedent, iit is unclear how often precedent has actually constrained the Court’s decisions because the Justices have latitude in how broadly or narrowly they choose to construe their prior decisions.

In some cases, however, a single precedent may play a particularly prominent role in the Court’s decisionmaking. For example, a plurality of Justices relied on Roe v. Wade as controlling precedent in their opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In that case, the plurality reaffirmed Roe’s holding that a woman has a protected liberty interest in terminating her pregnancy prior to fetal viability, stating that the essential holding of Roe “should be retained.” Another example of the heightened role that precedent can play in constitutional interpretation is the Court’s decision in Dickerson v. United States. That case addressed the constitutionality of a federal statute governing the admissibility of statements made during police interrogation, a law that functionally would have overruled the Court’s 1966 case Miranda v.Arizona. In striking down the statute, the majority declined to overrule Miranda, noting that the 1966 case had “become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture.”

More often, the Court reasons from the logic of several precedents in rendering its decisions. An example is Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, which held that the voters of Arizona could remove from the state legislature the authority to redraw the boundaries for legislative districts and vest that authority in an independent commission. In so holding, the Court examined the Elections Clause, which states that the “Times, Places, and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” The Court determined that the term “Legislature” encompassed the voters of a state making law through a referendum. In reaching this determination, the Court relied on three cases from the early twentieth century to support a more expansive view of the term “Legislature.” The Court described one of these cases from 1916, Ohio ex rel.Davis v. Hildebrant, as holding that a state referendum was “part of the legislative power” and could be “exercised by the people to disapprove the legislation creating congressional districts.."
Constitutional Analysis