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erratically, but will develop in a principled and
intelligible fashion. * * * While stare decisis is not
an inexorable command, the careful observer will
discern that any detours from the straight path of
stare decisis in our past have occurred for articulable
reasons, and only when the Court has felt obliged “to
bring its opinions into agreement with experience and
with facts newly ascertained.” * * * every successful
proponent of overruling precedent has borne the heavy
burden of persuading the Court that changes in society
or in the law dictate that the values served by stare
decisis yield in favor of a greater objective. * * *
[Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U.S. 254, 265-266 (1986);
citation omitted.]
Stare decisis is the preferred course because it promotes the
evenhanded, predictable, and consistent development of legal
principals, fosters reliance on judicial decisions, and
contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial
process. Hesselink v. Commissioner, 97 T.C. 94, 99 (1991).
A. Test for Overruling Prior Opinions
The U.S. Supreme Court has set forth the following four part
test for use in determining whether to overrule a prior decision:
(1) Whether the rule has proven to be intolerable simply in
defying practical workability, (2) whether the rule is subject to
a kind of reliance that would lend a special hardship to the
consequences of overruling and add inequity to the cost of
repudiation, (3) whether related principles of law have so far
developed as to have left the old rule no more than a remnant of
abandoned doctrine, and (4) whether facts have so changed, or
come to be seen so differently, as to have robbed the old rule of
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