Super module pointing to submodule branch instead of a specific commit?

Is there a way to have a super module point to a branch of a submodule instead of a specific commit ID? I have a repository of common code I'd like to use with a several different projects (each project has a repository of its own). I want those super repositories to reference the "stable" branch of this shared repository so that whenever they pull one of these super modules, they get any changes made to stable branch of the shared repository. When creating a tag of the super module, I still want it to tag based on the commit ID of the submodule (like I think it does today).

commit the new commit ID of the submodule to every super module it is a member of. That's somewhat tedious, but the larger problem is that not all everyone with commit access to the submodule will has access to all the super modules (they may not even know they exist).