Geeks

I know that many of you reading this site, namely my relatives, non-law school friends, girlfriend, pets, and strangers that I pay to read it, don't give a crap about the law. If you're in that category, don't bother with this post.

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If you're still here, let's ask a question:

If you could remove one Supreme Court case from the books, which would it be?

That's the question I want answered, but I'm setting some ground rules:

1. Roe and the other abortion cases (Casey, Stenberg, etc) are not included in the question. For many of you out there, these decisions are no-brainers... so let's leave them alone for this inquiry. I'm also eliminating Marbury, because combined with Ground Rule #2 (below), it would just be too drastic a choice.

2. A decision wiped off the books can wipe out subsequent decisions that rely on the decision you choose. So if you did pick Roe, Casey would be knocked out too. This only goes so far, of course. I'd limit the domino effect to those cases that explicitly take stare decisis into account.

So Hans v. Louisiana would probably knock out the Seminole Tribe line of cases, but kicking out Croson wouldn't necessarily require you to nix Adarand, since the latter only relies on principles of the former.

Furthermore, knocking out a case will not remove those that overrule or limit it. So kicking out Lochner doesn't necessarily mean you scrap West Coast Hotel.

3. That said, don't pick something that's been expressly overruled. We all agree that Plessy is bad, but we don't have to deal with it anymore. Feel free to choose something that's probably on thin ice, but hasn't ever been expressly overruled (e.g., Wickard).

4. I'm talking about a case or ACTUAL companion cases. No doctrines. If you think incorporation is a stupid idea, then pick one incorporation case, not all of them.

5. Please explain your answer, especially your motivation. So someone might choose a case that she thinks was bad law (say, Roe), or because it was a result she didn't like regardless of legal validity (say, Korematsu), or because it would topple a whole line of cases she found undesirable (say, Hans). Or for some other reason.

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So, leave your answer in comments, which you can access through the "Free Cookies" link below. Feel free to invent a fake name and email address, if it suits you.

UPDATE: You're allowed to choose something that someone's already chosen... although if you take Everson from Feddie he might challenge you to a duel.