Courts can choose prospective scope when announcing new constitutional rules

Evidence

“The Court ought neither to rely on casuistic arguments in denying constitutional claims, nor deem itself imprisoned within a formal, abstract dilemma. The judicial cheise is net limited to a new ruling necessarily retrospective, or to rejection of what the requirements of equal protection of the law, as now perceived, reqdire. For sound reasons, law generally speaks prospectively. More than a hundred years ago, for instance, the Supreme Court of Ohio, confronted with a problem not unlike the one before us, found no difficulty in doing so when it concluded that legislative divorces were unconstitutional. Bingham v. Miller, 17 Ohio 445. In arriving at a new principle, the judicial process is not impotent to define its scope and limdts. Adjudication is not a mechanical exercise nor does it compel ‘either/or’ determinations. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 2945

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off the prospective overruling doctrine threads from chapters 40-41 in Volume 1 — the dissent in the Illinois transcript case extends the judge’s power to scope new rulings. Relevant to the law-course polyad’s institutional-roles theme. — connects to: Applying newly changed law retroactively would let posterity govern the living — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2929; State courts may treat overruled decisions as law for intermediate transactions — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2865; Reliance-based limitations may refine prospective overruling doctrine — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2848