A new conservative majority on Florida’s highest court has
begun taking a shredder to this and other seemingly settled rulings, part of a
national rollback of what conservatives see as an era of liberal judicial
activism. With President Donald Trump’s appointment of 187 judges, three U.S.
appeals courts have flipped from liberal to more conservative majorities.
Critics say the Florida court’s abrupt reversal violates the concept of stare
decisis, which holds that rulings that overturn established law should be “well
thought-out and pretty rare,” says Prof. Kenneth Williams of the South Texas
College of Law Houston. The reason for the change is the court’s makeup:
Republican governors have replaced four of the justices who ruled on the 2016
case under Florida’s mandatory retirement law, tilting it to conservatives. The
new judges “have a very narrow interpretation of the Constitution and they will
come out with really narrow decisions,” says Stephen Harper of the Death
Penalty Clinic at Florida International University in Miami. “That means the
country is reverting to a much more conservative outlook and jurisprudence –
more conservative than I think the public wants, or is.”
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