With the retirement of Anthony Kennedy, the two Latin words most everyone will be speaking/debating the meaning of/bemoaning are stare and decisis. A few weeks ago I started putting together a syllabus, as it appears I will be again teaching a first-year legal research and writing course. While it’s now relatively easy to teach how to find the latest and best law in this age of electronic search engines and instant citators, a skill that’s harder to impart is predicting where the law will go. Stare decisis is a big issue.
Looking to update my course a bit, I abandoned the two cases I usually start the semester with, a pair of New Jersey cases tracking the development of liability theories dealing with the residual tort liability of sellers in real property conveyances, and decided to use Lawrence v. Texas instead. Lawrence was the 2003 decision which reversed Bowers v. Hardwick, dealing with Texas’ sodomy law. Lawrence is a good case to teach because it’s relatively short, well–written, and illustrates a pretty dramatic reversal, 180 degrees in 17 years, of what most folks thought was settled law. It also contains an interesting discussion of laws dealing with private conduct dating back to English common law centuries ago.
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