Academic highlight: Congressional overrides of Supreme Court decisions

SCOTUSblog ^ | 5/30/14 | Amanda Frost

[Duke C.]

In 1991, Professor Bill Eskridge published a landmark empirical study showing that Congress frequently overrode the Supreme Court’s statutory interpretation decisions. Eskridge’s findings, which surprised almost everyone at the time, support the now well-accepted conclusion that the Court and Congress are in constant dialogue with each other, meaning that neither institution can claim the last word on statutory meaning.

Then, in 2013, Professor Richard Hasen updated Eskridge’s study and found that over the last two decades “the number of Congressional overrides has fallen off a cliff.” Hasen’s study revealed that between 2001-12, Congress managed to override only 2.8 cases per cycle, far fewer than Eskridge’s findings of an average of twelve overrides in every two-year congressional cycle between 1975-1990. In his article, as well in a SCOTUSblog post describing his findings, Hasen speculated that the “dialogue” between the Court and Congress may be coming to an end.

[Marie Antoinette]

Isn’t this interesting?

[veracious]

Back when law was law and USA was USA.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I'm a dummy. Can someone give an example of such an override?

[TheOldSchool]

I am saddened by what is happening to our country, and more importantly, what is happening to our culture. I have a question however. Why can’t the congress, where laws are supposed to originate, introduce “laws” that clarify what the supreme court “interprets” as the meaning of the law, and voila, we have a counter balance to the ultimate arbitrator. Just a thought.

[Duke C.]

I'm a dummy. Can someone give an example of such an override?

Mobile v. Bolden 1980
Grove City College v. Bell 1984

http://prospect.org/article/overruling-court

[ex91B10]

FTA: Perhaps most interesting for those who want to know just how permanent any Supreme Court statutory interpretation decision will be, Eskridge and Christiansen list a series of variables that they see as correlated with the likelihood of a statutory override (though not necessarily the cause of that override)... • Close division (plurality or five- or six-Justice majority) among the Justices when deciding the case; • Judicial rejection of the interpretation offered by a federal agency and usually defended by the Solicitor General; • Judicial narrowing of federal regulation, except in tax and intellectual property cases, where regulation-friendly interpretations are often overridden; • Reliance on plain meaning of statutory texts, especially when such reliance depends critically on whole act and whole code arguments or flies in the face of strong legislative history

[MN Doc]

A hypothetical example would have been if the SCOTUS had ruled the other way in the Obamacare case yesterday; if they had ruled that the specific language of the statute barred giving subsidies to people who got their insurance from the Federal exchange, the Congress could have changed the law to allow the subsidies. It happens when the Court says a law as written doesn’t mean what they thought it did, or as written is unconstitutional, but there’s a way to change it so it would be constitutional. It can’t happen if the basic concept is ruled unconstitutional, as in today’s gay marriage ruling. Since they ruled based on Equal Protection under the 14th Amendment, the only way to overcome it would be with a Constitutional Amendment.

[11th_VA]

Given the number of states that had a definition law, and how the majority of blacks and Latinos oppose Gay Marraige, you’d think the GOP would push for an amendment - but they’re not called the ‘Stupid Party’ for nothing ...