Disregarding Precedent Can Harm Judicial Legitimacy, Kagan Says

US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan warned that disregarding precedent can undermine judicial legitimacy in the latest comments by a justice speaking out about the court’s recent blockbuster term and the criticism it generated.

“Judges create legitimacy problems for themselves when they don’t act like courts” and “when they instead stray into places that look like politics,” Kagan said in remarks Monday night at the the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center in New York.

Kagan spoke three days after Chief Justice John Roberts decried attacks on the court’s legitimacy that followed the June ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health overturning ...