Justice Clarence Thomas defended the Supreme Court‘s recent rulings overturning long-standing precedents of the high court, as the justices appear poised to overturn a 90-year-old precedent in their upcoming term.

Thomas argued, while speaking at Catholic University Law School, that the high court should not blindly follow precedents to guide current rulings if the established rulings do not respect the law or the country’s legal tradition.

“It’s not some sort of automatic deal where you can just say, ‘Stare decisis,’ and then turn off the brain,” Thomas said Thursday evening, per Courthouse News.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has overturned long-standing precedents regarding abortion law, affirmative action, and administrative agency law, among others. The high court will also hear a pair of cases in the coming months, which could result in overturning other long-standing precedents.

While recent major decisions have created headlines, it is not uncommon in the high court’s history for key precedents to be overruled decades later. One of the most famous examples includes the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled racial segregation was unconstitutional, overturning the infamous 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had previously deemed it lawful.

Thomas cited the Brown decision as an example in which the high court correctly declined to defer to stare decisis, or the legal principle of following a court’s precedent to guide a ruling.

“I do give respect to the precedent, but the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition and our country and our laws and be based on something,” Thomas said.

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