Die Rechtsprechungsänderung im US-amerikanischen Privatrecht - Aufgezeigt anhand des prospective overruling

The article deals with the practice of prospective overruling, an innovative method of U.S. law whereby a judgment does not have retrospective effect, but - like statutory law - only applies to future events. This doctrine was declared constitutionally unobjectionable in the Sunburst Oil decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1923, which explains why state courts continued with the practice of prospective overruling. On the federal level, prospective overruling was used for the first time in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case ending school desegregation. The next step was the U.S. Supreme Court's test developed in Chevron Oil in 1971. According to the test, courts have to consider three factors: First, whether the decision to be applied non-retroactively establishes a genuinely new rule, either by overruling clear past precedent on which litigants may have relied or by deciding an issue of first impression whose resolution was not clearly foreshadowed; second, whether retrospective application would further or retard the operation of that rule; and third, whether retroactivity could produce substantially inequitable results. Many state courts still apply the Chevron Oil test regarding their own state laws. However, the U.S. Supreme Court abandoned the Chevron Oil test in Harper in 1987. The ambiguities and uncertainties that exist with prospective overruling can be explained by the not entirely clear Leitbild of the judge, who when deciding in favour of a solely future application of law acts like a legislator. The article evaluates these developments in the context of the jurisprudential views on the role of a judge in the U.S. legal system and compares them with German law.