I’ve noticed that people either accept or reject Supreme Court rulings, especially the most significant ones. But they’ve come up with a way to overturn them.
This proposed amendment would be based on the ratification provision in the Constitution, which requires only three-quarters of the states to approve an amendment. However, this amendment would only serve to overturn Supreme Court rulings if three-quarters of the state supreme courts reject the ruling or issue a contrary ruling.
If the threshold is met, the ruling could be overturned in the first case or the contrary ruling could be applied in the second. What would be the political and judicial consequences if this amendment were to take effect?
Congress already basically has the power to overturn court rulings. They make laws.
Courts only rule on whether things are or are not in line with those laws.
This is of course simplified and a bit absurd for humorous effect, but in broad strokes this is how things work.
Let’s say there’s a law on the books that says people are not allowed to wear hats. Someone gets arrested for wearing a bandana on their head. They go to court challenging that arrest arguing that bandanas are not hats.
The court hears the arguments from both sides, the guy who was arrested arguing that the law doesn’t apply to bandanas, and the lawyers for the police arguing that the law applies more broadly to other forms of headwear.
The court listens to those arguments, and considers previous similar cases to look for precedent, (like maybe there was a guy who was arrested for having a baseball cap tied to his belt and whether that counted as “wearing” a hat, or someone was arrested for wearing a KFC bucket on his head and whether that met the legal definition of a hat, or someone who was arrested for wrapping a hat around their feet and whether that counted or only if you wore it on your head) Maybe they even consider whether wearing a hat should be considered a form of free speech and whether that law is legal.
And then that ruling establishes further precedent, which will affect how/if that law is applied going forward. If the court has already decided that wearing a bandana doesn’t count as a hat, then it doesn’t make sense to arrest people for it in the future because the court will just throw the case out based on that precedent.
Now whatever the outcome, let’s say Congress doesn’t like what the courts decided. They can pass newer and more specific laws concerning the legality of bandanas and other headgear, maybe even going so far as to add a constitutional amendment to specifically protect or exempt hats or bandanas as free speech.
And then going forward, the courts would need to rule on cases based on that new law or amendment.
So if the court rules that bandanas are ok, then Congress goes and makes a new law specifically banning bandanas and goes through the trouble (for some reason) to amend the constitution to say that bandanas are not free speech, then future arrests based on that would be based on that. You couldn’t retroactively arrest someone for wearing a bandana before it was made illegal, but you could sure arrest them if they do it again.
But that’s not how it works. The Supreme Court just interprets the laws as “unconstitutional” no matter how clearly laid out they are. So passing of laws doesn’t matter anymore, and neither does precedent.
Nice answer. TY for the in-depth explanation.