Cite as: 558 U. S. ____ (2010) 17 Opinion of STEVENS, J. that the funding of Citizens United’s film can be regulated under them. The only thing preventing the majority from affirming the District Court, or adopting a narrower ground that would retain Austin, is its disdain for Austin. II The final principle of judicial process that the majority violates is the most transparent: stare decisis. I am not an absolutist when it comes to stare decisis, in the campaign finance area or in any other. No one is. But if this princi­ ple is to do any meaningful work in supporting the rule of law, it must at least demand a significant justification, beyond the preferences of five Justices, for overturning settled doctrine. “[A] decision to overrule should rest on some special reason over and above the belief that a prior case was wrongly decided.” Planned Parenthood of South eastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833, 864 (1992). No such justification exists in this case, and to the contrary there are powerful prudential reasons to keep faith with our precedents.17 The Court’s central argument for why stare decisis ought to be trumped is that it does not like Austin. The opinion “was not well reasoned,” our colleagues assert, and it conflicts with First Amendment principles. Ante, at 47– 48. This, of course, is the Court’s merits argument, the many defects in which we will soon consider. I am per­ fectly willing to concede that if one of our precedents were dead wrong in its reasoning or irreconcilable with the rest of our doctrine, there would be a compelling basis for revisiting it. But neither is true of Austin, as I explain at length in Parts III and IV, infra, at 23–89, and restating a merits argument with additional vigor does not give it —————— 17 I will have more to say shortly about the merits—about why Austin and McConnell are not doctrinal outliers, as the Court contends, and why their logic is not only defensible but also compelling. For present purposes, I limit the discussion to stare-decisis-specific considerations.