From a reader:

Jonah,
I know you’re going to get LOTS of letters from belt-wearing lawyers, but here’s one simple legal perspective. Courts, to say the least, observe stare decisis (which means “to stand on that which has been decided” in Cantonese, I think), but there’s a reason judges still exist rather than robed holograms simply repeating previous opinions.
I won’t weary you with the legalese, but ***nearly all*** of the great civil rights decisions were stop-on-a-dime reversals of precedent; even super-duper-mondo kinda precedents, with years of history and gloriously coherent (and often, err, racist) opinions backing them up. So if judges had applied back then Specter’s Roe standard, blacks would not be voting today, going to our schools, or eating at our lunch counters, etc.
You’ve been very smart in the last few years pointing out how conservatives and liberals both love government when it serves their respective ends, and hate government when it doesn’t, just like they do religion, pop culture, and anything else. This is the same thing. Stare decisis meum: to stand on my decision.
All laud an honor, sir.

Me: I don’t know how smart I’ve been (I still run with scissors). But I hope he’s wrong about all the legalese email I’m going to get. Me no want.