We’ve recently raised a few issues regarding justifications for bigotry.  What especially rankles some of us is the often-heard argument that people should do something a particular way (recently, the issue is preventing gay marriage) because that is the way that it has been done in the past.  

What a ridiculous-sounding principle on which to base an argument! Ridiculous sounding, unless you are a lawyer arguing an important case.  In courtrooms across this country, multitudes of lawyers lawyers stand up every day with straight faces and proceed to argue to judges that a case should be decided a particular way solely because a previous and similar case was handled that same way.

In law, this principle that judges should rely on precendent is given the obscure and mysterious-sounding label “stare decisis,” from the Latin, “stand by the thing decided.” [Stare decisis et non quieta movere, meaning “to stand by the decisions and not to disturb settled points”].

There is the great power in this heuristic.  At least it’s an equal opportunity principle:  Analogizing to old cases is a technique that can be used by crafty opportunists, as well as good-hearted seekers of justice. 

Though we are tempted to scoff at this principle (of relying on precedent) when it is employed by bigots, we need to keep things in context.  That very same principle is the heartbeat of justice.  How strange, you might think, that such an amoral principle determines outcomes of important cases!  That’s the way it is, however.  I’ll …