OH SHIT. Is the Supreme Court About To Swing Another Presidential Election?

[Raster]

45. Yes, they are using it as precedent, however...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5678490

Legal Precedent and the Bush-Gore Ruling

A column in The New York Times this week caught our attention. Adam Cohen wrote about number of recent conferences on the Rehnquist Court and its legacy. They have a particular prohibition built in. Participants in the conferences are told they're not to discuss what Mr. Cohen called the most historic case of William Rehnquist's time as Chief Justice, Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 presidential election. The reason, they're told, is that the Court specifically declared that the case was not to be used as precedent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/opinion/15tues4.html?_r=0

Has Bush v. Gore Become the Case That Must Not Be Named?

<snip>

There is a legal argument for pushing Bush v. Gore aside. The majority opinion announced that the ruling was “limited to the present circumstances” and could not be cited as precedent. But many legal scholars insisted at the time that this assertion was itself dictum — the part of a legal opinion that is nonbinding — and illegitimate, because under the doctrine of stare decisis, courts cannot make rulings whose reasoning applies only to a single case.