According to this interesting analysis in Slate by Lara Bazelon, it did, as the result of Bush v Gore (2000).
Maybe that's why Roberts, C.J. cast the fifth and deciding vote to uphold Obamacare in 2012.
One more self-inflicted wound might make the Court one of the most hated institutions in government after the Trump White House, now that the presidential election of 2016 is behind us by almost two weeks and Pres. Elect Donald "Not my president" Trump is busy picking cabinet heads at his golf course in New Jersey.
Where's the Constitutional Law in all this?
Try the Doctrine of Constitutional Disillusionment.
Someone suggested listing SCOTUS decisions that amount to self-inflicted wounds.
The all-time leading contender, of course is Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) holding for the South, White Supremacy and Slavery. Also that blacks have no rights worthy of respect by any white man. Nor are they citizens of the U.S. This makes them ineligible to have standing to sue on diversity of citizenship grounds in any U.S. federal court. It took a civil war and the 14th Amendment to over-rule this abortion of a decision. This Wikipedia entry provides the cite; I haven't read the commentary.
Noah Feldman nominates the Fred Korematsu decision upholding the Internments of the Americans of Japanese Ancestry internments on the West Coast. It's still on the books, never having been overruled, but Feldman, a law professor formerly at NYULS and now HLS, claims that it has been decried by justices writing for the Court in other civil rights cases sufficiently to show that it cannot be cited with approval, much less relied on.
A similar thing happened in NYT v Sullivan (1964) which was a great civil rights victory for the press to report on the major issue of the day, the civil rights struggle.
There, Justice Brennan, if memory serves, writing for the Court, referred to the Alien and Sedition Act of 1802 which gave the president the power to deport aliens on suspicion, not any legal process, and for the feds to prosecute people who spoke out against the president (Adams) among others (but not the vice-president (Jefferson) who the Federalist party, which dominated congress and passed the bill into law, declared that the Act had been deemed unconstitutional through long practice in the court of public opinion.
So has Korematsu, one hopes, although I must say, Trump and his supporters have come out in favor of requiring all Muslims in the U.S. to register with the FBI.
Abe Foxman, to his great credit, the head of the Jewish Anti-defamation League, has said that if this proposal is enacted into law, he would register with the government as a Muslim.
Shouldn't we all do that?
Remember Fr. Niemoller's prayer referring to the Nazis of his homeland, Germany before the war? It goes something like this:
When they came to take away the Communists, I didn't protest because I wasn't a Communist.
When they came for the Trade Unionists, I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Trade Unionist.
When they came for the Jews, I didn't object, because I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to save me.
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