600 POWELL, J., concurring [creditor] proves the grounds upon which the writ was issued." Art. 3506. The Court's opinion makes these points well, and I need not elaborate them further. In brief, the Louisiana statute satisfies the essential prerequisites of procedural due process and represents a fairer balancing of the interests of the respective parties than the statutes in Fuentes. I therefore agree that the Louisiana procedure should be sustained against petitioner's challenge. II MR. JUSTICE STEWART reproves the Court for not adhering strictly to the doctrine of stare decisis. Post, at 634-636. To be sure, stare decisis promotes the important considerations of consistency and predictability in judicial decisions and represents a wise and appropriate policy in most instances. But that doctrine has never been thought to stand as an absolute bar to reconsideration of a prior decision, especially with respect to matters of constitutional interpretation. Where the Court errs in its construction of a statute, correction may always be accomplished by legislative action. Revision of a constitutional interpretation, on the other hand, is often impossible as a practical matter, for it requires the cumbersome route of constitutional amendment. It is thus not only our prerogative but also our duty to re-examine a precedent where its reasoning or understanding of the Constitution is fairly called into 2 See St. Joseph Stock Yards Co. v. United States, 298 U. S. 38, 93 (1936) (Stone and Cardozo, JJ., concurring in result); Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U. S. 393, 405, 406-408 (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). For the view that stare decisis need not always apply even to questions of statutory interpretation, see Boys Markets v. Retail Clerks Union, 398 U. S. 235, 255 (1970) (Stewart, J., concurring). POWELL, J., concurring 416 U.S. question. And if the precedent or its rationale is of doubtful validity, then it should not stand. As Mr. Chief Justice Taney commented more than a century ago, a constitutional decision of this Court should be "always open to discussion when it is supposed to have been founded in error, [so] that [our] judicial authority should hereafter depend altogether on the force of the reasoning by which it is supported." Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 470 (1849). Moreover, reconsideration is particularly appropriate in the present case. To the extent that the Fuentes opinion established a Procrustean rule of a prior adversary hearing, it marked a significant departure from past teachings as to the meaning of due process. As the Court stated in Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U. S., at 895, "[t]he very nature of due process negates any concept of inflexible procedures universally applicable to every imaginable situation." The Fuentes opinion not only eviscerated that principle but also sounded a potential death knell for a panoply of statutes in the com 3 The Fuentes opinion relied primarily on Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U. S. 337 (1969). That case involved a prejudgment garnishment of wages in which the creditor had no preexisting property interest. It is readily distinguishable from the instant case where the creditor does have a pre-existing property interest as a result of the vendor's lien which attached upon execution of the installment sales contract. Indeed, depending on the number of installments which have been paid, the creditor's interest may often be greater than the debtor's. Thus, we deal here with mutual property interests, both of which are entitled to be safeguarded. Fuentes overlooked this vital point. In addition, the Court recognized in Sniadach that prejudgment garnishment of wages could as a practical matter "impose tremendous hardship" and "drive a wage-earning family to the wall." Id., at 340, 341-342. By contrast, there is no basis for assuming that sequestration of a debtor's goods would necessarily place him in such a "brutal need" situation. 600 STEWART, J., dissenting mercial field. This fact alone justifies a re-examination of its premises. The Court today reviews these at length, and I join its opinion because I think it represents a reaffirmation of the traditional meaning of procedural due process. MR. JUSTICE STEWART, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL concur, dissenting. The Louisiana sequestration procedure now before us is remarkably similar to the statutory provisions at issue in Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67 (1972). In both cases the purchaser-in-possession of the property is not afforded any prior notice of the seizure or any opportunity to rebut the allegations of the vendor before the property is summarily taken from him by agents of the State. In both cases all that is required to support the issuance of the writ and seizure of the goods is the filing of a complaint and an affidavit containing pro forma allegations in support of the seller's purported entitlement to the goods in question. Since the procedure in both cases is completely ex parte, the state official charged with issuing the writ can do little more than determine the formal sufficiency of the plaintiff's allegations before ordering the state agents to take the goods from the defendant's possession.1 * For a discussion of the far-reaching implications of the Fuentes rationale, see Clark & Landers, Sniadach, Fuentes and Beyond: The Creditor Meets the Constitution, 59 Va. L. Rev. 335 (1973). The authors suggest that Fuentes could require invalidation of many summary creditor remedies in their present form. 1 The Louisiana Supreme Court held that Fuentes did not govern the present case. Essentially, that court held that because the Louisiana vendor's privilege is defeated if the vendee alienates the property over which the vendor has the privilege, this case falls within the language in Fuentes that "[t]here may be cases in which a creditor could make a showing of immediate danger that a debtor STEWART, J., dissenting 416 U.S. The question before the Court in Fuentes was what procedures are required by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment when a State, at the behest of a private claimant, seizes goods in the possession of another, pending judicial resolution of the claimant's assertion of superior right to possess the property. The Court's analysis of this question began with the proposition that, except in exceptional circumstances, the deprivation of a property interest encompassed within the Fourteenth Amendment's protection must be preceded by notice to the affected party and an opportunity to be heard. The Court then went on to hold that a debtor-vendee's interest in the continued possession of purchased goods was "property" within the Fourteenth Amendment's protection and that the "temporary, nonfinal deprivation of [this] property [is] . . . a 'deprivation' in the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment." 407 U. S., at 85. Accordingly, Fuentes held that such a deprivation of property must be preceded by notice to the possessor and by an opportunity for a hearing appropriate under the circumstances. Matters such as will destroy or conceal disputed goods." Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67, 93 (1972). The Court today quite correctly does not embrace this rationale. In discussing the "extraordinary situations"" that might justify the summary seizure of goods, the Fuentes opinion stressed that these situations "must be truly unusual." Id., at 90. Specifically, it referred to "special situations demanding prompt action." Id., at 93. In effect, the Louisiana Supreme Court held that all vendor-creditors in the State can be conclusively presumed to be in this "special" situation, regardless of whether the individual vendor could make a showing of immediate danger in his particular case. But if the situation of all such vendors in a State could be conclusively presumed to meet the "extraordinary," "unusual," and "special" conditions referred to in Fuentes, the basic constitutional rule of that case would be wholly obliterated in the State. 2 407 U. S., at 90-93. 600 STEWART, J., dissenting requirements for the posting of bond and the filing of sworn factual allegations, the length and severity of the deprivation, the relative simplicity of the issues underlying the creditor's claim to possession, and the comparative "importance" or "necessity" of the goods involved were held to be relevant to determining the form of notice and hearing to be provided, but not to the constitutional need for notice and an opportunity for a hearing of some kind. The deprivation of property in this case is identical to that at issue in Fuentes, and the Court does not say otherwise. Thus, under Fuentes, due process of law permits Louisiana to effect this deprivation only after notice to the possessor and opportunity for a hearing. Because I would adhere to the holding of Fuentes, I dissent from the Court's opinion and judgment upholding Louisiana's ex parte sequestration procedure, which provides that the possessor of the property shall never have advance notice or a hearing of any kind. As already noted, the deprivation of property in this case is identical to that in Fuentes. But the Court says that this is a different case for three reasons: (1) the plaintiff who seeks the seizure of the property must file an affidavit stating "specific facts" that justify the sequestration; (2) the state official who issues the writ of sequestration is a judge instead of a clerk of the court; and (3) the issues that govern the plaintiff's right to sequestration are limited to "the existence of a vendor's lien and the issue of default," and "[t]here is thus far less danger here that the seizure will be mistaken and a corresponding decrease in the utility of an adversary hearing," ante, at 618. The Court's opinion in Fuentes, however, explicitly rejected each of these factors as a ground for a difference in decision. The first two purported distinctions relate solely to |