New Jersey Education Ass'n v. Burke

OPINION OF THE COURT

ADAMS, Circuit Judge.

Legal precepts tend to expand, inexorably and sometimes imperceptibly. This is so, at least in part, because a broadly-formulated legal principle is by its very nature applicable to a wide range of situations. In any particular ease, advocacy impels each party to claim the benefit of a potentially applicable doctrine, and in the absence of countervailing principles, consistency leads courts to decide in accordance with the suggested rule. But as a doctrine travels beyond the circumstances which generated it, the reasons which gave rise to that doctrine…