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An Analysis of Policy-Based Congressional Responses to the U.S. Supreme Court's Constitutional Decisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Bethany Blackstone
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Abstract

While Congress can attempt to overrule constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court by initiating the constitutional amendment process, an amendment is rarely a practicable option. Instead, Congress regularly tries to modify the impact of constitutional decisions with ordinary legislation. I analyze policy-based responses to the Supreme Court's constitutional decisions that were initiated in Congress between 1995 and 2010. For each responsive proposal, I consider the relationship between the proposed legislation and the Court's legal holding and the relationship between the proposal and the public policy associated with the Court's decision. I find that Congress enjoys considerable success in reversing the policy impacts of the Court's decisions but is limited in its ability to overcome the Court's legal rules.

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Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 199 - 228
Copyright
© 2013 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The data employed in this article are available at http://politicalscience.unt.edu/~blackstone/Home/LSR2013.html.

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