18 CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N Opinion of STEVENS, J. extra weight in the stare decisis calculus. Perhaps in recognition of this point, the Court supple­ ments its merits case with a smattering of assertions. The Court proclaims that “Austin is undermined by experience since its announcement.” Ante, at 48. This is a curious claim to make in a case that lacks a developed record. The majority has no empirical evidence with which to substan­ tiate the claim; we just have its ipse dixit that the real world has not been kind to Austin. Nor does the majority bother to specify in what sense Austin has been “under­ mined.” Instead it treats the reader to a string of non sequiturs: “Our Nation’s speech dynamic is changing,” ante, at 48; “[s]peakers have become adept at presenting citizens with sound bites, talking points, and scripted messages,” ibid.; “[c]orporations . . . do not have monolithic views,” ibid. How any of these ruminations weakens the force of stare decisis, escapes my comprehension.18 The majority also contends that the Government’s hesi­ tation to rely on Austin’s antidistortion rationale “dimin­ ishe[s]” “the principle of adhering to that precedent.” Ante, at 48; see also ante, at 11 (opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.) (Government’s litigating position is “most importan[t]” —————— 18 THE CHIEF JUSTICE suggests that Austin has been undermined by subsequent dissenting opinions. Ante, at 9. Under this view, it appears that the more times the Court stands by a precedent in the face of requests to overrule it, the weaker that precedent becomes. THE CHIEF JUSTICE further suggests that Austin “is uniquely destabilizing because it threatens to subvert our Court’s decisions even outside” its particular facts, as when we applied its reasoning in McConnell. Ante, at 9. Once again, the theory seems to be that the more we utilize a precedent, the more we call it into question. For those who believe Austin was cor­ rectly decided—as the Federal Government and the States have long believed, as the majority of Justices to have served on the Court since Austin have believed, and as we continue to believe—there is nothing “destabilizing” about the prospect of its continued application. It is gutting campaign finance laws across the country, as the Court does today, that will be destabilizing.