What Supreme Court’s jettisoning of precedent may mean for future

What happens when “settled law” isn’t really settled? Supreme Court justices are showing a greater willingness to toss precedent – even when they haven’t been asked to do so.

Earlier this week the conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court voted to scrap a legal rule that, while decades old, had never really been used.

On the surface it may not seem like a radical move – the judicial equivalent of canceling a gym membership you never use. The so-called watershed exception – that criminal rules don’t apply retroactively unless...