Empirics prove---Grutter.

It was perhaps because the language of judicial sunsets had not been invented, that the one possible recent example of it, Grutter, was itself hazy. Some of the haze is due, no doubt, to the way in which the Court shoehorned the sunset into the opinion. The Supreme Court for years has insisted on affirmative action having a "logical stopping point."27 But this stopping point was one internal to the program—the term was meant to refer to the time period in the affirmative action policy where the preference should end. In Grutter, however, the Court appears to have imposed an external, judicial stopping point—one that had nothing to do with the University of Michigan policy. The Court said, in essence, that it did not want to give the University carte blanche for all time.28 This does not really appear to be a claim about a "logical stopping point" as such; rather, it appears to be one about the vitality of a Supreme Court opinion in the face of evolving circumstances.

Regardless of whether this 'Judicial sunset" reading of Grutter is descriptively correct, the above characterization of it enumerates a possible template for such sunsets. That is, the Court can hand down an opinion and announce that its holding is entitled to the full effect of the stare decisis doctrine for a set number of years (e.g., "In five years, we will be completely open to reconsideration of these claims."), or that it will be binding law until a designated event (e.g., "Following the cessation of hostilities with Japan and Germany, we will be completely open to reconsideration."). After the elapse of that time period, both lower courts and the Supreme Court would not be bound by the decision, though they could of course follow its reasoning and logic. In effect, the decision would become something akin to an out-of-circuit precedent for a federal court of appeals, in that it would have no formal binding weight as law, but its reasoning could be cited as persuasive authority via an affirmative codification of the old decision.