Digitonomy:
This guy would not be my choice to throw around accusations about terrible reasoning. If he really thinks there’s such a requirement, he should state precisely where it is to be found. If he feels that as a matter of practice, you should be able to explain a decision adequately in order for people to have respect for your position, fine. But a decision made without such is still a valid decision - Plessy v. Ferguson was a valid decision, and the law of the land until it was overturned years later.
I really hope that this UT law professor did not say that sentence, but was misquoted.
If you read the article, the case was made for Brown vs Board of Education. The SCOTUS decision was not socially accepted until Congress passed laws refecting the opinion.
“Rights are most secure when they are supported by legislative enactment,” Balkin told
FOXNews.com. He said he believes the right to abortion would have been better settled if it had been articulated through congressional channels.
A case in point, Balkin said, was 1954’s
Brown v. Board of Education ruling that made racial segregation illegal. The decision was so unpopular at the time — even among anti-segregation legal scholars — that it inspired segregationist lawmakers to mandate congressional hearings for Supreme Court candidates, a process Judge John Roberts got to know quite well.
“Brown truly becomes law, really becomes something everyone’s on board with after the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Balkin said. “At that point, Congress said, ‘We are behind Brown.’”
In other words, he said, Brown was not considered by many Americans to be legitimate until its basic tenets were codified through the legislative process."
The point of the matter is that Conngress has never been able to, and WILL never be able to codify the SCOTUS decision of Roe.