Force-push overruling
In the Version Control for Law model, an overruling treated like a force push that rewrites a branch's history, and therefore permitted only through a gated procedure.
First used in Version Control for Law
The model maps legal interpretation onto Git: enacted law as the main branch, amendments as tagged merges, judicial opinions as signed commits, precedent as commit history. A force push is the most destructive operation in that picture, so the Gibsonian canons gate it.
An overruling must name the canon the earlier decision violated, supply the canonical re-reading, address reliance interests, and reason from the text. An overruling that fails these conditions is itself void as precedent.
The point of the metaphor is governance rather than style. Repositories protect important branches from careless rewriting while still allowing correction, and the model asks a legal order to protect settled interpretation in the same way.
Related terms
Related frameworks
Version Control for Law
Legal interpretation can be governed like a versioned codebase: enacted text is the protected main branch, opinions are signed commits, dissents are preserved branches, and overruling is a force push allowed only through logged, gated conditions.
The Gibsonian Canons of Constitutional Interpretation
A closed, priority-ordered law of interpretation, enacted before any institution is given power to interpret, that binds every interpreter to the same method and requires a traceable record of each interpretation.