Has the roberts supreme court used precedence less to decide its cases?
Executive summary
The Roberts Court has both overturned longstanding precedents in landmark, high-profile cases and left many precedents intact, producing a mixed record rather than a simple retreat from stare decisis; empiricists count a modest share of rulings that alter precedent (about 2.2% of decisions) and identify roughly 21-22 overrulings during Roberts’s tenure [1] [2]. Critics point to dramatic examples—Dobbs, the end of Roe, and the overturning of Lemon—while defenders and scholars emphasize that most cases leave precedent untouched and that the Court sometimes upholds settled law [3] [4] [5].
1. A measurable but limited rate of overruling: what the data show
Empirical work assembled by legal reporters and databases finds that the Roberts Court has overturned or altered precedent in a small slice of its decisions: Law360 reported that about 2.2% of the Court’s rulings under Chief Justice Roberts altered past precedent and counted roughly 21 such changes [1], and other empirical summaries put the number of identified overrulings in the low twenties [2]. Those figures show the Court is not an outlier in the frequency of overruling compared with some predecessors, but they also confirm that when the Court does overturn precedent it tends to draw outsized attention because the decisions often involve constitutional fundamentals [1] [2].
2. High-profile reversals drive perception: Dobbs, Lemon and more
The Roberts era produced a string of headline-grabbing reversals—Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, and the Court’s rejection of the long-used Lemon test for religion cases are emblematic—facts cited in scholarly and journalistic accounts of the Court’s jurisprudential shifts [3] [4]. Those decisions are consequential not only legally but politically, fueling the sense that the Court has become more willing to undo settled rules, a perception amplified by advocacy groups and commentators who catalogue conservative wins as symptomatic of an institutional reorientation [6] [3].
3. Chief Justice Roberts’s record is mixed, not monolithic
Analysts note that Roberts personally has sometimes voted to preserve precedent and in other cases has sided with overruling majorities; empirical studies show he has joined many decisions that overturn precedent, but comparative work also places him lower than several historical justices in raw counts of decisions he authored that explicitly overruled earlier cases [2] [7]. The Court has also in recent terms produced rulings that uphold precedent or limit conservative assaults—decisions such as Allen v. Milligan have been read as instances where Roberts joined a majority applying existing doctrine rather than discarding it [5].
4. Scholarly debate: impressionistic impressions vs. empirical nuance
Legal scholars and institutions stress that perceptions about the Roberts Court’s fidelity to precedent are both “impressionistic and empirical,” with panels at Harvard and others arguing that while some precedent-shattering opinions are unmistakable, the broader pattern is subtler—many precedents remain intact and the Court continues to rely on stare decisis factors such as reliance interests and doctrinal coherence when deciding whether to overrule [8] [9]. Empirical projects that count overrulings and reviews find a mixed picture: dozens of precedents reviewed and many more upheld alongside the relatively small number actually overturned [2] [7].
5. Politics, jurisprudential philosophy and legitimacy concerns
Critics accuse the Court—particularly the conservative bloc—of instrumentalistic use of precedent to achieve ideological outcomes and warn that selective overruling undermines legitimacy; defenders and some justices argue that overturning bad precedent is sometimes necessary to restore correct constitutional interpretation, and institutional explanations cite the Court’s traditional factors for overruling (reasoning quality, workability, consistency, factual developments, reliance) as governing choices [6] [9] [8]. Reporting and law reviews note that the partisan split in many overruling votes heightens questions about motive and consistency but do not settle whether the Roberts Court as an institution has abandoned stare decisis wholesale [3] [6].
Conclusion
The evidence assembled in reporting and scholarly work supports a qualified answer: the Roberts Court has overturned significant precedents in a way that reshaped policy and public perception, but measured empirics show such reversals are a small fraction of the Court’s docket, and the Court continues to both uphold and overturn precedent depending on doctrinal judgments and the ideological alignment of majorities [1] [2] [3].