Here are some judicial opinions in which a judge admitted he had been wrong in another case.
We must take the law as we find it, and, upon examination of its language, we are of opinion that this exception is well taken. The cases of United States v. Laciest, 2 Mason 129, and United States v. Smith, 2 Mason 143, have been cited at the bar as containing a different opinion expressed in the circuit court in Massachusetts. [Justice Story was sitting as Circuit Judge] I owe it in candor to acknowledge, that the fact is so, but I have no recollection that the point was made at the argument, and I am confident that it never was insisted upon in the view which has been presented by the argument in this Court. My own error, however, can furnish no ground for its being adopted by this Court, in whose name I speak on the present occasion. Justice Story in United States v. Gooding, 25 U.S. 12 Wheat. 460 (1827).
Under these circumstances, except for any personal humiliation involved in admitting that I do not always understand the opinions of this Court, I see no reason why I should be consciously wrong today because I was unconsciously wrong yesterday. Justice Jackson in Massachusetts v. United States, 333 U.S. 611 (1948).
Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late. Since I now realize that I should have joined the dissenters in the Merchants Nat. Bank of Boston case, 320 U.S. 256, I shall not compound error by pushing that decision still farther. I would affirm the judgment, substantially for the reasons given below. Justice Frankfurter in Henslee v. Union Planters Nat. Bank & Trust Co., 335 U.S. 595 (1949).
I come, finally, to the Court’s stinging observation that I joined the majority opinion in Standard Fire Ins. Co. v. Knowles, 568 U. S. _ (2013)—a case that arose in the same posture as this one, but that was resolved without reference to the question whether the appellate court abused its discretion. Of course Knowles did not address whether denials of permission to appeal under §1453(c)(1) are to be reviewed for abuse of discretion—which is why today’s majority cannot cite it as precedent. As for my own culpability in overlooking the issue, I must accept that and will take it with me to the grave. Justice Scalia in Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Company v. Brandon W. Owens, 574 U. S. ____ (2014).