The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

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.