The justices disagree as to whether Grutter was correctly decided.
"In fact, it was correctly decided, however deplorable the consequences.
"Do you believe that Roe was correctly decided?" the Senator followed up.
Judge John G. Roberts Jr. says he should not be expected to comment on whether critical cases were correctly decided.
Incredibly, he claimed to have no opinion on whether Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, was correctly decided.
And even in the year 2001 as prominent a judicial voice as Richard A. Posner, the circuit court judge, confesses that "I actually think Korematsu was correctly decided".
And, third, given America's near-fanatical devotion to free speech with all the benefits and irritants that brings, Citizens United was correctly decided.
Jeffrey Eisenberg, the father of the plaintiff in the Montgomery County case, who also served as a lawyer for his son, told the court in his brief that the case was correctly decided and there was no need to review it.
In this morning's ruling Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, notes that "there is disagreement" on the Court about whether Grutter was correctly decided, and indeed Antonin Scalia wrote a separate one-paragraph concurrence saying that the only reason he was joining the majority was because the plaintiff "did not ask us to overrule Grutter's holding" that diversity permits the use of race.
If there are good reasons to believe that an earlier case was correctly decided, and if the facts in a later case are the same as those in the earlier case, then there are good reasons for believing that the same decision would be correct in the later case.
