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When the Florida Supreme Court ruled late last month that a unanimous jury is not required for the state to hand down a death sentence, the decision reverberated in the state prisons that house hundreds of felons already sentenced to death.

The legal wrangling over their fate overnight became 鈥渃haos,鈥� says Marty McClain, a death-penalty lawyer.

After all, only four years earlier, Florida had struck down the power of judges, not juries, to decide whether or not to execute convicted felons. That ruling followed a landmark U.S. Supreme Court finding that Florida鈥檚 system for capital sentencing was unconstitutional and led nearly 100 inmates on death row there to challenge their sentences.

But a new conservative majority on Florida鈥檚 highest court has begun taking a shredder to this and other seemingly settled rulings, part of a national rollback of what conservatives see as an era of liberal judicial activism. That ideological rollback is embodied in President Donald Trump鈥檚 appointment of 187 U.S. judges, including two to the Supreme Court, since 2017. Under his watch, three U.S. appeals courts have flipped from liberal to more conservative majorities.

In its Jan. 23 verdict, the Florida Supreme Court said it had 鈥済ot it wrong鈥� in 2016 when it curbed the power of judges to effectively overrule split juries on capital cases. That case, Hurst v. State, was supposed to have a 鈥渓imited practical effect on the administration of the death penalty,鈥� Chief Justice Charles Canady wrote. But he said it had led to legal maneuvering that was undermining 鈥渄ecades of settled Supreme Court and Florida precedent.鈥�

Critics say the court鈥檚 abrupt reversal 鈥撀爐he 2016 ruling was more than a decade in the making 鈥撀爃as caused chaos for inmates聽on death row and attorneys like Mr. McClain. Some argue it violates the legal concept of stare decisis, which holds that rulings that overturn established law should be 鈥渨ell thought-out and pretty rare,鈥� says Kenneth Williams, a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston.

Life and death

In states that practice capital punishment, juries who find a suspect guilty are required to weigh the 鈥渁ggravating sentences鈥� and decide whether they justify execution or not. Florida鈥檚 twist on this safeguard is that judges aren鈥檛 bound by a jury鈥檚 advisory finding and can hold a separate hearing and decide that the death penalty is justified.

This power was struck down, however, in 2016 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which said in its decision that the Sixth Amendment 鈥渞equires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death. A jury鈥檚 mere recommendation is not enough.鈥�

This then led to Hurst v. State, in which the Florida Supreme Court set a new precedent for the state鈥檚 death-penalty system.

The new interpretation by Florida鈥檚 highest court serves to 鈥渞emove your friends and neighbors from the awesome power of the state to kill one of your neighbors,鈥� says Eric Freedman, a Hofstra University law professor.

The reason for the about-turn is the court鈥檚 makeup: Republican governors have replaced four of the justices who ruled on the 2016 case under Florida鈥檚 mandatory retirement law, tilting it to conservatives.

Whether justified or not, the impulse in Florida to rewrite law as soon as a new court is seated shows how judges taking cues from national political tides 鈥� and the U.S. Supreme Court itself 颅鈥� can affect lives in profound ways.

These are judges 鈥渨ho have a very narrow interpretation of the Constitution and they will come out with really narrow decisions,鈥� says law professor Stephen Harper, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at Florida International University in Miami. 鈥淭hat means the country is reverting to a much more conservative outlook and jurisprudence 鈥� more conservative than I think the public wants, or is.鈥�

History鈥檚 scrapyard

To be sure, the U.S. legal landscape is littered with scrapped ideas. Rulings like Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that enshrined 鈥渟eparate but equal鈥� racial segregation and Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) that upheld a state law against homosexual acts have long been overturned. Such reexaminations of settled law require careful reading of the Constitution but also the ability for appeals courts to absorb evolving societal norms into the law.

By contrast, Florida鈥檚 reconstituted court took only a year or so to reverse the 2016 verdict and failed to show 鈥減owerful reasons鈥� to do so, says Professor Harper, a former public defender in Miami-Dade County. The issues at hand were 鈥渨ay too close.鈥�

Mr. Freedman agrees. 鈥淭here is nothing wrong with the concept that you want to reexamine old precedents to see if they make sense,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut does it make institutional, practical sense, both in terms of where we are now and where we are likely to be?鈥�

To many conservative thinkers, the answer is yes. The Senate Republicans Communications Center tweeted 鈥淢erry Christmas!鈥� in applauding the latest wave of White House appointments to the federal bench in December.

These judges鈥� extended terms mean the effects of their rulings could be felt for decades to come. But the impacts may not be as revolutionary as progressives fear, because conservative jurists don鈥檛 make up a monolith and, moreover, will be leery of upending established case law, say analysts.

Take the Supreme Court: The four liberal justices tend to rule more as a pack than the other five. That suggests an awareness, says Mr. Freedman, that the power of the court comes in large part from its ability to project stability.

Moreover, 鈥渢here is a split of thinking on [the power of precedent] in conservative circles,鈥� writes Brian Fitzpatrick, who studies judicial selection at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville, in an email.

This divide is seen in the reasoning of late Justice Antonin Scalia, who 鈥渢hought that every day could not be a new day in the law,鈥� putting a strong emphasis on stare decisis, Mr. Fitzpatrick points out. Whereas 鈥減eople like Justice [Clarence] Thomas think it is wrong to prolong mistaken decisions 鈥� that his oath is to the Constitution, not to what his colleagues said about the Constitution.鈥�

Challenging judicial consensus

This readiness to challenge precedent was seen last year when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned 40 years of labor law by making it illegal to force non-union workers to pay union fees. Meanwhile, states like Alabama and Georgia have passed laws intended to set up a challenge to the seminal Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.聽Given that one Texas state judge has already ruled 鈥淥bamacare鈥� unconstitutional, some progressives fear that conservatives hope to stack the courts in order to have the health care law overturned at the federal level.

鈥淗ow can we order our lives if the law is constantly changing鈥� in a cavalier manner, asks Mr. Williams, the Houston law professor. 鈥淚f it becomes completely unpredictable, it becomes almost anarchy.鈥�

Floridians, for one, are feeling the effects of a whipsaw state Supreme Court, says Daniel Goldberg, legal director at the Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group in Washington, D.C. Last year it blocked Miami Beach鈥檚 minimum wage ordinance on the grounds that it preempted state and federal authority to set a minimum wage.

鈥淭hat means that 24,000 Miami workers are losing a total of $117 million annually. Talk about real-world impacts,鈥� says Mr. Goldberg, referring to estimates of how much the ordinance would have raised earnings.

Florida has 384 inmates on death row, one of the highest of all states. Last month鈥檚 ruling has scrambled the work of capital defense attorneys, who were challenging the soundness of sentences based on a judge鈥檚 discretion to overrule a jury.

鈥淎 death sentence can鈥檛 be arbitrary, can鈥檛 be struck by lightning,鈥� says Mr. McClain. 鈥淭his is about the importance of finality.鈥�