Supreme 180s: it doesn't happen often, but when the Supreme Court changes its mind and overturns an earlier decision, it can have a major impact. A look at key reversals of the past--and what may lie ahead.

• Author: Greenhouse, Linda
• Position: NATIONAL

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Raised as Jehovah's Witnesses, Marie and Gathie Barnett had been taught that pledging allegiance to the flag was a form of idol worship prohibited by their religion. So when other children in their four-room schoolhouse in West Virginia rose every morning to salute the flag, the two sisters, ages 8 and 10, remained silently in their seats.

The year was 1942, and the United States had just entered World War II. Patriotic fervor was at a peak in their small town outside Charleston, and the West Virginia Board of Education had adopted a resolution that a student's refusal to salute the flag would "be regarded as an act of insubordination."

Morning after morning, the Barnett sisters were sent home in disgrace, and the West Virginia authorities appeared to be on solid ground. Two years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled by a vote of 8 to 1 that school officials in Minersville, Pa., were not required to exempt an elementary school brother and sister, Jehovah's Witnesses named Lillian and William Gobitis, from reciting the Pledge. There seemed to be little chance that the Barnett sisters would be able to continue in public school without violating a central tenet of their faith.

But then something remarkable happened. The Supreme Court changed its mind. Appalled by mob attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses after the Gobitis decision and with two new Justices, the Court reversed its decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis and held on June 14, 1943, that a compulsory flag salute was a form of compelled expression that violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.

A HUMAN INSTITUTION

The Supreme Court's 6-to-3 decision in West Virginia v. Barnette * is an example of the Court's complicated relationship with its own precedents. And that relationship, in turn, says a great deal about the Court itself.

The Supreme Court is often thought of as a remote institution--nine Justices delivering judgments from on high and shielded from the normal ebb and flow of human affairs.

In fact, the Court is a thoroughly human institution. Except for the Chief Justice, who receives a car and driver, the Justices drive themselves to work. They live in ordinary houses and apartments, and their salaries are no higher than those of young lawyers at major big-city law firms.

While they don't have to worry about getting re-elected (they're appointed for life by the President, subject to Senate confirmation), they're very much aware...