Doesn’t spill up to broader precedence – judicial reverence counteracts the overruling.

What would happen then? While there is growing consensus that the Insular Cases stand on par with Plessy in their grotesque use of the rule of law to constitutionalize racism, white supremacy, and colonialism, a host of questions remains with respect to the viability of their revocability. To start, what does it mean to overrule the Insular Cases? Is it at all possible to completely abrogate the decisions that are usually grouped together under that shorthand? What about partially? And perhaps most importantly, what weight would the Court give the decisions’ longstanding status as “good law”?

Indeed, if the Supreme Court takes up a case that squarely puts territorial incorporation in the balance, the fact that leading Insular Cases decisions, such as Downes v. Bidwell, are well over a century old will surely weigh heavily. Stare decisis—“fidelity to precedent” 31 —will put a thumb on the scales against overruling territorial incorporation. Even if a majority of the Court is willing to hold that the territorial incorporation doctrine is ill-reasoned (it is), the Court—and, more likely, advocates arguing against for its repeal—will have to wrestle with that doctrine. Arguments against territorial incorporation will have to grapple with the well-understood notion that “the respect accorded prior decisions increases, rather than decreases, with their antiquity . . . .”32 And experience shows that however illreasoned the Insular Cases may be, judicial reverence (or inertia) might be a powerful counterweight to their repeal.33