“Supreme Court precedents don’t have an especially long shelf life: they depreciate by about 80% between years one and twenty.” Washington University in St. Louis Law Professor Lee Epstein, blogging about recent research confirming an earlier study showing that the rates at which U.S. Supreme Court rulings are subsequently cited inevitably decrease over time and finding that none of the hypothesized factors as to why depreciation rates vary among cases, such as “ideological distance between the deciding and sitting Court,” holds any water. Epstein concludes, “What are we to make of these findings? . . . Precedent (almost always) depreciates, period [and] because of its ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ quality, law professors and lawyers might (re)consider carefully the cases they emphasize in class and in the courtroom. If currency is a virtue for at least some judges, maybe it should be for them too.” Jotwell, Courts Law, October 14, 2014.