106
Scalia, J., concurring
109 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1 (1960). Thus, the dissent is saying, in effect, that stare decisis demands the preservation of methods of destroying stare decisis recently invented in violation of stare decisis.
Contrary to the dissent's assertion that Chevron Oil articulated "our traditional retroactivity analysis," post, at 113, the jurisprudence it reflects "came into being," as Justice Harlan observed, less than 30 years ago with Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 (1965). Mackey, supra, at 676. It is so unancient that one of the current Members of this Court was sitting when it was invented. The true traditional view is that prospective decisionmaking is quite incompatible with the judicial power, and that courts have no authority to engage in the practice. See ante, at 94; James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U. S. 529, 534 (1991) (opinion of Souter, J.); American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Smith, 496 U. S. 167, 201 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment); Desist, supra, at 258-259 (Harlan, J., dissenting); Great Northern R. Co. v. Sunburst Oil & Refining Co., 287 U. S. 358, 365 (1932). Linkletter itself recognized that "[a]t common law there was no authority for the proposition that judicial decisions made law only for the future." 381 U. S., at 622-623. And before Linkletter, the academic proponents of prospective judicial decisionmaking acknowledged that their proposal contradicted traditional practice. See, e. g., Levy, supra, at 2, and n. 2; Carpenter, Court Decisions and the Common Law, 17 Colum. L. Rev. 593, 594 (1917). Indeed, the roots of the contrary tradition are so deep that Justice Holmes was prepared to hazard the guess that "[j]udicial decisions have had retrospective operation for near a thousand years." Kuhn v. Fairmont Coal Co., 215 U. S. 349, 372 (1910) (dissenting opinion).
Justice O'Connor asserts that " '[w]hen the Court changes its mind, the law changes with it.' " Post, at 115 (quoting Beam, supra, at 550 (O'Connor, J., dissenting)). That concept is quite foreign to the American legal and con-
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