How Supreme Court precedents die before they are overruled (opens in new tab)

When the Supreme Court says a precedent has been “abandoned,” the real work has already been done\. That was the story of Lemon v\. Kurtzman , decided in 1971\. For decades, the court invoked, revised, sidestepped, and criticized Lemon ’s approach to the establishment clause of the First Amendment\. The formal reports still contained the case\. Lawyers still cited it\. Lower courts still had to account for it\. Yet the governing center of gravity had shifted\. When the court later said in 202...