Cite as: 509 U. S. 688 (1993)
Opinion of Souter, J.
of an Act of Congress applicable to the Philippines, providing that "no person for the same offense shall be twice put in jeopardy of punishment." Act of July 1, 1902, ch. 1369, § 5, 32 Stat. 692. It is true that in his opinion for the Court in Gavieres, Justice Day wrote that we had held in Kepner v. United States, 195 U. S. 100 (1904), "that the protection against double jeopardy therein provided had, by means of this statute, been carried to the Philippine Islands in the sense and in the meaning which it had obtained under the Constitution and laws of the United States." 220 U. S., at 341. Nonetheless, this Court has declined to treat decisions under that statute as authoritative constructions of the Fifth Amendment. See Green v. United States, 355 U. S., at 197, and n. 16; see also Abbate, supra, at 198, n. 2 (opinion of Brennan, J.).
VI
Burton and Gavieres thus lend no support for the Court's decision to overrule Grady and constrict Harris. Whatever may have been the merits of the debate in Grady, the decision deserves more respect than it receives from the Court today. "Although adherence to precedent is not rigidly required in constitutional cases, any departure from the doctrine of stare decisis demands special justification. See, e. g., Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U. S. 111, 116 (1965); Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649, 665 (1944)." Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S. 203, 212 (1984).
The search for any justification fails to reveal that Grady's conclusion was either "unsound in principle," or "unworkable in practice." Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528, 546 (1985). Grady's rule is straightforward, and a departure from it is not justified by the fact that two Court of Appeals decisions have described it as difficult to apply, see ante, at 711-712, n. 16, one apparently because it must be distinguished from the "same evidence" test, see Ladner v. Smith, 941 F. 2d 356, 363-364 (CA5 1991). Nor does the fact that one of those courts has
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