The business of saying something is "settled law" is, with every
Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing, revealed as little more
than a game. Judge Sotomayor tells America that Roe v.
Wade is "settled" law.…that mystical ironclad thing
called precedent. What Senator will now ask why Plessy
v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that approved racial
segregation, was not "settled law" by 1954 when it was overturned
by Brown v. Board of
Education? Brown dismantled the Supreme
Court's Plessy decision, the latter a classic
of Sotomayor-style judicial activism run amok with jurists who
considered themselves wise white men simply ignoring the 14th
Amendment.
