Arlen Specter makes up the term "superprecedent" ...

And uses it in a NYT op-ed to hint that Judge Roberts might need to reveal whether he would overrule Roe v. Wade. Beldar skewers him as thoroughly and painfully as can be done in this age of Google and Westlaw.

So what's worse: Specter making up a term and claiming "legal scholars" use it? Or Specter being dumb enough not to realize there's a such thing as computer research and that scores of lawyers and lawprofs are monitoring the nomination process and blogging about it?

IN THE COMMENTS: A commenter brings up a 1976 use of the term in a law review article, and I respond, noting that old usage -- which I don't remember ever seeing -- was not anything close to what Specter is using it for.

MORE: Redstate notes a Court of Appeals decision by Judge Luttig that uses the term "super-stare decisis" to refer to Casey:

I understand the Supreme Court to have intended its decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), to be a decision of super-stare decisis with respect to a woman's fundamental right to choose whether or not to proceed with a pregnancy. See Casey, 505 U.S. at 844-46 ("Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt. Yet 19 years after our holding that the Constitution protects a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy in its early stages, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973), that definition of liberty is still questioned. . . . After considering the funda-mental constitutional questions resolved by Roe, principles of institutional integrity, and the rule of stare decisis, we are led to conclude this: the essential holding of Roe v. Wade should be retained and once again reaffirmed."). And I believe this understanding to have been not merely confirmed, but reinforced, by the Court's recent decision in Stenberg v. Carhart, 2000 WL 825889, at *4 (June 28, 2000) ("[T]his Court, in the course of a generation, has determined and then redetermined that the Constitution offers basic protection to the woman's right to choose. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973); Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 112 S. Ct. 2791, 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992). We shall not revisit those legal principles.").

There's something to this. Let's see if this notion is used to require Roberts to commit to leaving Roe alone.

AND: Luttig's use of the term "super-stare decisis" is unique in the case law, but I did find three uses of the term in the law review file on LEXIS, including one referring to Casey, written by Lawprof Earl Maltz. All three use the term only in the context of being critical that a precedent is regarded as especially invulnerable. Here's Maltz:

The theoretical problems with the Court's opinion [in Casey] are even more troubling. The implications of the argument are breathtaking. The analysis reverses the accepted view that interventionist constitutional decisions should be granted less protection under the doctrine of stare decisis because they cannot be corrected by other branches of government. In essence, the opinion asserts that if one side can take control of the Court on an issue of major national importance, it can not only use the Constitution to bind other branches of government to its position, but also have that position protected from later judicial action by a kind of super-stare decisis.

The article is Abortion, Precedent, and the Constitution: A Comment on Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 68 Notre Dame L. Rev. 11 (1992).

And let's be clear that Luttig's use of the term "super-stare decisis" is also critical of the idea. Even if we translate Spector's "superprecedent" to "super-stare decisis," there's still no accepted legal concept here. Yet, clearly, it is well-understood that the Casey Court purported to make a final decision about the permanence of abortion rights.