Red, I went to a website that explains law to simple-minded people like me. It said this about precedent:
In common law legal systems, a precedent or authority is a legal case that establishes a principle or rule. This principle or rule is then used by the court or other judicial bodies use when deciding later cases with similar issues or facts. The use of precedent provides predictability, stability, fairness, and efficiency in the law. The Latin term stare decisis is the doctrine of legal precedent.
The precedent on an issue is the collective body of judicially announced principles that a court should consider when interpreting the law. When a precedent establishes an important legal principle, or represents new or changed law on a particular issue, that precedent is often known as a landmark decision.
Then I went another place that helps simpletons and they said that Roe was a landmark decision.
Don't we want "predictability, stability, fairness, and efficiency in the law?"
So wouldn't a scotus justice who has regard for landmark decisions help promote those good things?
Except of course, you can’t produce a law, only a court opinion. 50 years after this “ landmark decision” the country remains split on the issue of abortion.
I partly grew up in a city that, twenty years after Brown v Board of Ed, remained split on the value of desegregation. Nonetheless, Brown was settled law, segregation was illegal, and Plessy remained securely overruled. Hmm.