The Influence of Congressional Preferences on Legislative Overrides of Supreme Court Decisions

Abstract

Studies of Court–Congress relations assume that Congress overrides Court decisions based on legislative preferences, but no empirical evidence supports this claim. Our first goal is to show that Congress is more likely to pass override legislation the further ideologically removed a decision is from pivotal legislative actors. Second, we seek to determine whether Congress rationally anticipates Court rejection of override legislation, avoiding legislation when the current Court is likely to strike it down. Third, most studies argue that Congress only overrides statutory decisions. We contend that Congress has an incentive to override all Court decisions with which it disagrees, regardless of their legal basis. Using data on congressional overrides of Supreme Court decisions between 1946 and 1990, we show that Congress overrides Court decisions with which it ideologically disagrees, is not less likely to override when it anticipates that the Court will reject override legislation, and acts on preferences regardless of the legal basis of a decision. We therefore empirically substantiate a core part of separation‐of‐powers models of Court–Congress relations, as well as speak to the relative power of Congress and the Court on the ultimate content of policy.

Judicial Independence and Political Uncertainty: How the Risk of Override Affects the Court of Justice of the EU

“…Pollack 2003 14. See Ferejohn and Weingast 1992;Epstein and Knight 1998;Bailey and Maltzman 2011;and Uribe, Spriggs, and Hansford 2014. 15. See Garrett, Kelemen, and Schultz 1998;Tsebelis and Garrett 2001;and Carrubba, Gabel, and Hankla 2008. the positions of the pivotal legislators/contracting states are set and known, the court makes the first move, and the legislature responds.…”

Invoking Precedent: Discussion of Supreme Court Decisions at Circuit Court Confirmation Hearings

“…366-367). Although evidence suggests Congress overrides both statutory and constitutional decisions with which it disagrees (Uribe, Spriggs, & Hansford, 2014), we expect that cases in which a law passed by Congress was struck down will be most salient for members of the Judiciary Committee when questioning circuit court nominees. We anticipate that senators may see these hearings as a means to communicate with the judiciary more broadly about the limits of judicial constraint on congressional power and the type of decision that might draw more formal congressional rebuke.…”

Opportunity and Overrides: The Effect of Institutional Public Support on Congressional Overrides of Supreme Court Decisions

“…We do not expect our theory to differ in constitutional versus statutory cases. Moreover, Uribe, Spriggs, and Hansford (2014) show that there is little difference in how Congress approaches these types of cases, at least in terms of ideological divergence. The majority of overrides included in our data are statutory.…”

“…10 Spatial theories of policy making predict that Congress is more likely to override judicial decisions it disagrees with when the decision is located farther from its most preferred policy. We model our ideological distance measurement on the approach in Uribe, Spriggs, and Hansford (2014), the only large- N study to find support for ideological disagreement. To measure the location of the precedent, we rely on Judicial Common Space scores (Epstein et al 2007), using the ideal point of the median of the majority coalition as the measure of the location of the judicial decision.…”

“…What explains these congressional responses to US Supreme Court decisions? Surprisingly, the bulk of the evidence suggests that Congress’s ideological disagreements with precedents rarely affect congressional responses to Supreme Court decisions (Hettinger and Zorn 2005, but see Uribe, Spriggs, and Hansford 2014). The lack of an obvious role for ideology in this process suggests that other forces play a primary role.…”