Not So Supreme?
Ian Millhiser
February 13, 2019
Congress actually has a lot of mostly unused power to rein in the Roberts Court by clarifying the intent of the law.
Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh listen as President Donald Trump gives the 2019 State of the Union speech.
It is a grim time for the rule of law in the United States. Our Constitution is controlled by the mixture of Republican partisans and conservative ideologues who dominate the Supreme Court. Even before Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement turned the Court into a place where liberalism reliably goes to die, the Roberts Court had undermined numerous labor, environmental, consumer, and voting rights laws.
Yet, while many of these decisions are rooted in the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution—and therefore impervious to congressional review—the Court is just as likely to misread an act of Congress as it is to read the Constitution as coextensive with the Republican Party’s national platform. Congress has plenty of power to clarify the intent of the law, through ordinary legislation. In the past, it has used this power extensively. However, Congress has increasingly abdicated its responsibility to correct Supreme Court decisions that butcher federal laws. In the last four decades, the number of federal laws overruling a Supreme Court decision dropped nearly 80 percent, according to a study by law professor Rick Hasen. Congress needs to reverse that trend.
https://prospect.org/article/not-so-supreme
