Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had. - Benjamin N. Cardozo

I am ready to concede that the rule of adherence to precedent, though it ought not to be abandoned, ought to be in some degree relaxed. I think that when a rule, after it has been duly tested by experience, has been found to be inconsistent with the sense of justice or with the social welfare, there should be less hesitation in frank avowal and full abandonment. … That court best serves the law which recognizes that the rules of law which grew up in a remote generation may, in the fullness of experience, be found to serve another generation badly, and which discards the old rule when it finds that another rule of law represents what should be according to the established and settled judgment of society.

Code is followed by commentary, and commentary by revision, and thus the task is never done.

The repetition of a catchword can hold analysis in fetters for fifty years or more.