The consistency is very important, therefore, to overturn precedent, and hence consistency, the perceived violation must be extraordinary. An example would be when Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy v. Ferguson over the issue of separate but equal racial segregation.

If a long-held decision has been cited by numerous subsequent decisions, is overturned, all those subsequent decisions can in turn be overturned. The more significant the case, landmark decisions if you will, the more cases are dependent upon them.

I am a strong supporter of Newdow. I belong to his FACTS church and have been unable to donate to it given the doctrine against the church accepting money with a reference to God printed on it. Living in the same larger community has given me multiple opportunities to listen to him speak and limited socializing. He is intelligent and personable and I wish him well.

That said, the court precedent I would like to see overturned BECAUSE it would lead to massive changes, namely reigning in the expansion of the federal government, is the 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn. It is upon this case that that the current understanding of the interstate commerce clause of the constitution is derived. The constitution states that congress has the right to regulate interstate commerce. That is all well and good, but in Wickard a perverse logic was introduced to those words. At the time, farmers were restricted to a maximum quota of wheat production. Wickard produced a little more than the quota and although I haven't read how that was dealt with, I suspect he was fined. He responded eventually, in the Supreme Court, by arguing that the extra wheat he grew was for personal use and therefore not subject to federal regulations whose stated authority was that of interstate commerce, a legitimate authority for wheat grown for sale.

The court ruled that if Wickard had not grown his own wheat, he would have purchased wheat from someone else, thus he had indirectly affected interstate commerce and was subject to the law.

This case was used as precedent in deciding the Atlanta Star Hotel case where a black man was denied a hotel room because those arguing the case saw that would probably lose if arguing on civil rights law straigt up (as memory serves). Thus much civil rights law today is based on Wickard. The man in question was a traveling salesman.

It was also used last year in Gonzales (the infamous Alberto) v. Raich where the DEA was ruled to have authority superior to the State of California regarding medicinal marijuana due to the fact that the California grown and consumed pot deprived pot farmers in other states of the would-be commerce.

This has gotten so out of hand, that Reason magazine pointed it out like this: Prior to the confirmation of John Roberts to the SCOTUS, they made a list of questions they would ask if allowed to ask questions in the confirmation hearings. Number one on the list was, "What does NOT constitute interstate commerce?" In other words, if indirect effects on commerce are counted, everything falls under that clause, which is an idiotic stance since the clause was meant as a specific exemption to broad limitations on Congressional authority.

In God We Trust couldn't have been because of the Civil War; our dollars are Federal Reserve Notes, which was made in 1913. I suppose the saying could have been carried over, but then the question is why did we decide to add it to the new bills (probably because the Federal Reserve is not run by the US Congress; it merely appoints the head who then does whatever he wants. Indeed, the US Congress is run by the Federal Reserve instead).

Alright, well, the answer to my question was about what I thought; bad. Not to say the people assisting were wrong, but I mean the logic behind precedence of at least equal courts is idiocy. For the SC, let's just say, to defer because of "precedent" and then overturn precedent in the next case is clearly a stupid principle. I agree that without following precedent of higher courts, we'd have 100 times as many lawsuits, because every single individual challenge would be a seperate case with a totally unique ruling. But that the SC, which has the power to pretty much do whatever the hell it pleases, to reference 23 precedents in a court decision (that's probably an underestimate) is escaping their duty; that is, to look at the law, and see if it is Constitutional, or if it is not, period. Precedent is utterly irrelevant.

Of course, this was me ranting, not a challenge to anyone else.

Words don't generally lose their meaning through repetition, but they can lose their impact and forcefulness. I remember the first time I heard, "Holy Shit!" in a movie and thought, "oooooohhh--that's really bad." I was young at the time, but now it seems almost quaint. It seems that now, even "Fuck you" doesn't sound so bad, especially if it's said in a playful way. And if most people who use currency don't even notice the "In God We Trust" phrase any more, that's something that I'm not going to worry about.

... it would be the first constitutional amendment ever to roll back any part of the Bill of Rights ...

It seems that the 18th amendment rolled back the idea that people have the right to control their own bodies by deciding what they can and cannot put in them, which might be interfering with a rather broad (probably incorrect) reading of the Eighth Amendment. The amendment you refer to would certainly be a much more direct attack on the First Amendment.

Lynyrd Skynyrd was an "outlaw" music group? The handful of albums they released were with major labels; they used equipment made by corporate manufacturers; they toured on buses and jets; they copyright their tunes with the lockstep fervor of every other act on the planet; and they'll still perform like perfumed mongrels at the sound of jingling shekels in the ol' piggy bank: where exactly does the "outlaw" part come in?

Presumably in the same way that multimillionaire evangelical Christian leaders who meet directly with the President, preach sermons to tens of thousands in their personal megachurches every week, own their own radio stations, TV stations and publishing houses, and stand at the head of special interest groups composed of millions of like-minded believers, are "oppressed".

Lynyrd Skynyrd was an "outlaw" music group? The handful of albums they released were with major labels; they used equipment made by corporate manufacturers; they toured on buses and jets; they copyright their tunes with the lockstep fervor of every other act on the planet; and they'll still perform like perfumed mongrels at the sound of jingling shekels in the ol' piggy bank: where exactly does the "outlaw" part come in?

At any rate, more power to Newdow!

Historically speaking, in the UK (far back enough for this to be relevant to USA legal theory), the Common Law consisted almost entirely of precedent, with statutes being the rarity. Nowadays more and more statutes are passed each year, so precedent is maybe less relevant.