[bloppe]

I understand all that, but overturning precedent is pretty much always an option for common law judges (and even when they don't want to call it overturning precedent, they can just find enough "substantive differences" to call it unrelated), and jurisprudence constante sounds an awful lot like stare decisis with extra steps.

That's why I say there's no strong distinction. They're just like slightly different flavors of the same basic principles.