'I Have Been to the Darkest Corners of Government, and What They Fear Is Light'

[Vattel]

180. The point is kind of pedantic, but even when a court does overturn an earlier decision

it does not change the law. You yourself admit that courts do not phrase what they do in such cases in terms of changing the law, and I submit this is because most judges are not conceptually confused about the difference between a ruling that attempts to accurately apply the law and the law itself. Brown v the Kansas Board of Education did not change the law (in this case the 14th Amendment). Judge Warren argued that In Plessy v Ferguson (I might not be spelling this right) the Court made an empirical mistake in thinking that education of black and white children in the USA could be separate but equal. The law did not change--the 14th Amendment required equality under the law. What changed was the Court's judgment as to whether education could be separate and yet equal under the law.