Sixty years ago, judicial infallibility was an accepted myth in many quarters—especially (and unsurprisingly) among the judges. The law lords (precursors of the Supreme Court justices) could not reconsider a ruling on a legal point reached by their predecessors, whose decision was treated as writ in stone. Lord Denning opposed suspect convictions being reviewed because it would acknowledge that courts occasionally get things wrong. This attitude changed with the decline of deference. In 1966, the law lords announced that they could change their minds— since then the top UK court has done so on a number of occasions. And growing concern about wrongful convictions led to parliament setting up the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 1995 to enable past miscarriages of justice to be put right.
Judicial fallibility is nothing to be ashamed of. Judges are human, and so they make mistakes from time to time. And, although the extent of fallibility should not be exaggerated, it is unsurprising when you think about it. Cases should only get to court because they raise difficult points, often points on which reasonable people could differ. The Court of Appeal exists because trial judges sometimes go wrong, and the Supreme Court exists because the Court of Appeal sometimes goes wrong. On quite a few appeals, the judges themselves disagree with other members of the same panel. And, quite apart from this, particularly in the present and fast-changing world, a legal principle which accorded with previous values or practices can become anachronistic, and so appeal courts adapt and develop the law.