Of course that law, if challenged, would be subject to further judicial review. Congress can't eliminate court precedent. While Congress may pass a new law that changes the impact of the court's decision, the precedent remains in effect. For example, in the Supreme Court ruled that a federal civil rights law that protected people with disabilities from discrimination did not apply to the airline industry. However, Congress meant for that law to apply to airlines. Congress responded to the decision by passing a new law, the Air Carrier Access Act, that applied specifically to air travel.
While this had the effect of protecting the rights of disabled people traveling by air, it didn't overturn the court's decision.
The earlier law still doesn't apply to the airline industry. In deciding new cases, the court is bound by precedent established in cases decided previously. Sometimes, these precedents combined with the precise language of a law lead the court to a decision it doesn't like, or that it thinks probably goes against Congress' intent in making the law.
When this happens, the court's majority opinion may include an invitation to the legislature to either amend the law, or to pass a new law that fixes the problem.
Drafting and passing a new law can be a time-consuming process, but it certainly takes less effort than amending the Constitution. A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate. If it passes this hurdle, the amendment is sent to the state legislatures. The amendment doesn't become an official part of the Constitution until 75 percent of the states approve it. Constitutional amendment isn't always necessary, however, to correct judicial interpretations that go against congressional intent.
For example, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of after several Supreme Court decisions illustrated how prior civil rights laws didn't have as broad a scope as the legislature intended.
The act negated as many as nine court opinions, including five decisions handed down just two years earlier. This power of "judicial review" has given the Court a crucial responsibility in assuring individual rights, as well as in maintaining a "living Constitution" whose broad provisions are continually applied to complicated new situations.
While the function of judicial review is not explicitly provided in the Constitution, it had been anticipated before the adoption of that document.
Prior to , state courts had already overturned legislative acts which conflicted with state constitutions. Moreover, many of the Founding Fathers expected the Supreme Court to assume this role in regard to the Constitution; Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, for example, had underlined the importance of judicial review in the Federalist Papers, which urged adoption of the Constitution.
Hamilton had written that through the practice of judicial review the Court ensured that the will of the whole people, as expressed in their Constitution, would be supreme over the will of a legislature, whose statutes might express only the temporary will of part of the people.
And Madison had written that constitutional interpretation must be left to the reasoned judgment of independent judges, rather than to the tumult and conflict of the political process. If every constitutional question were to be decided by public political bargaining, Madison argued, the Constitution would be reduced to a battleground of competing factions, political passion and partisan spirit.
In this decision, the Chief Justice asserted that the Supreme Court's responsibility to overturn unconstitutional legislation was a necessary consequence of its sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. That oath could not be fulfilled any other way. In retrospect, it is evident that constitutional interpretation and application were made necessary by the very nature of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers had wisely worded that document in rather general terms leaving it open to future elaboration to meet changing conditions.
Maryland, a constitution that attempted to detail every aspect of its own application "would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves.
The Constitution limits the Court to dealing with "Cases" and "Controversies. The Court does not give advisory opinions; rather, its function is limited only to deciding specific cases. The Justices must exercise considerable discretion in deciding which cases to hear, since approximately 7,, civil and criminal cases are filed in the Supreme Court each year from the various state and federal courts.
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