Cite as: 524 U. S. 236 (1998)
Scalia, J., dissenting
ness of overruling House, regardless of its virtue as an original matter. "[T]he burden borne by the party advocating abandonment of an established precedent is greater where the Court is asked to overrule a point of statutory construction." Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 172-173 (1989); see also Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U. S. 720, 736 (1977); Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 406 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). The Court acknowledges this principle, but invokes cases of ours that say that stare decisis concerns are " 'somewhat reduced' " in the case of a procedural rule. Ante, at 251. The basis for that principle, of course, is that procedural rules do not ordinarily engender detrimental reliance—and in this case, as I shall discuss, detrimental reliance by the Congress of the United States is self-evident. In any event, even those cases cited by the Court as applying the "somewhat reduced" standard to procedural holdings still felt the need to set forth special factors justifying the overruling. United States v. Gaudin, 515 U. S. 506, 521 (1995), concluded that "the decision in question had been proved manifestly erroneous, and its underpinnings eroded, by subsequent decisions of this Court"; and Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 828-830 (1991), noted that the overruled cases had been "decided by the narrowest of margins, over spirited dissents challenging [their] basic underpinnings," had been "questioned by Members of the Court in later decisions," and had "defied consistent application by the lower courts."
The Court's next excuse is that House was decided without full briefing or argument. The sole precedent it cites for the proposition that this makes a difference is Gray v. Mississippi, 481 U. S. 648, 651, n. 1 (1987). Gray, however, did not deny stare decisis effect to an opinion rendered without full briefing and argument—it accorded stare decisis effect. Id., at 666-667. What the Court relies upon is the mere dictum, rendered in the course of this opinion (and dictum in a footnote, at that), that "summary action here does not have the
259
Page: Index Previous 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007