Tom: Critics of recent high court decisions claim that judges' willingness to abide by earlier decisions is necessary to avoid legal chaos  Since high courts of the past often repudiated legal precedents and no harm to the legal system ensued, these critics' objections must be politically motivated and ought to be ignored  Mary: High courts have repudiated precedents in the past, but they were careful to do so only when the previous rulings were old and had clearly become outdated  The recently overturned rulings were themselves recent
Overturning any recent legal ruling diminishes the law, which comes to be viewed as unstable and capricious
whether the overturning of recent high court precedents will harm the legal system