
Putting Precedent in Its Place, Part 1
Akhil Reed Amar, Yale Law School, breaks down the phrase "judicial power" from the Constitution into five distinct components: the power to interpret, to implement, to render a binding judgment (res judicata), to set precedent (stare decisis), and to remedy. He uses this framework to reread Warren Court decisions, showing how the distinction between interpreting equality and implementing it explains why Brown v. Board of Education shifted the burden of proof onto segregation yet confined its 1954 holding to public education, leaving the Court to wait until Loving v. Virginia in 1967 to strike down bans on interracial marriage. The lecture also applies the same interpretation-implementation distinction to school prayer cases and to one person, one vote. Part of Amar's Yale course on the unwritten Constitution, delivered as a clear, chaptered classroom talk tracing how courts translate constitutional meaning into enforceable rulings.