Someone w/ legal chops enlighten me: Is it possible to reverse all past decisions in one fell swoop? I thought each defendant had to appeal individually.
Yes, a higher court may issue an opinion reversing all prior decisions on the same subject. SCOTUS does this all the time.
However, such rulings only reverse the legal holdings of those prior rulings (generally meaning the "rules" developed by or applied in those prior rulings). Generally, the outcomes of the underlying cases are not automatically reversed. Defendants in criminal cases can usually appeal their outcomes even if their cases has been finalized (all appeals concluded), but defendants in civil cases usually cannot unless their cases are still proceeding through the court system (i.e., the case is still somewhere in the appeals process).
