Timeline for Can Congress enforce an overturned Supreme Court decision?
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16 events
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| Sep 28, 2022 at 1:30 | comment | added | Rhys | @reirab then by that same token, the Dobbs decision might also be something that isn't an accurate reflection of the intended meaning of the Constitution and Dobbs might have just created a de facto situation where something is not treated as a Constitutional right, even though it actually is. You seem to prefer language that holds Dobbs to be a more accurate reflection of the Constitution's true meaning than Roe, but how can we be sure? phoog's position is just a more practical way of looking at things than trying to divine what the "true" meaning of the Constitution is | |
| Sep 27, 2022 at 14:47 | comment | added | reirab | @phoog The court has found plenty of things that weren't accurate reflections of the intended meaning of the Constitution. That doesn't mean that the Constitution actually said those things, either explicitly or implicitly, but rather than the court just decided a case incorrectly. Schenck is another good example. Clearly, the Constitution is intended to protect distributing flyers protesting the draft, Supreme Court decisions to the contrary notwithstanding. Which is why it was later overturned. | |
| Sep 27, 2022 at 6:10 | comment | added | phoog | @reirab "it wasn't there to begin with": the court has found implicit rights in the constitution, including the right to privacy on which Roe was based. The only reason that right isn't "in the constitution" is that the Dobbs court has ruled it so. For 50 years or so, the right was in the constitution, albeit implicitly. | |
| Sep 27, 2022 at 3:39 | comment | added | Joshua | Congress might be bound to not do so by the Tenth Amendment. | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 14:26 | comment | added | reirab | @vsz I'd say that particular one is more of a half-truth than an outright falsehood. No right was actually removed from the Constitution because it wasn't there to begin with, but the de facto consequence of Roe was that it was treated as if it were a Constitutional right until Roe was overturned. So, Dobbs didn't "strip away" anything that was actually in the Constitution, but did remove a de facto situation where something had been treated as if it were a Constitutional right, even though it actually wasn't. | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 14:08 | comment | added | reirab | @AndrewLeach Yes, that's essentially correct, though the 'right' existed in practice during the time following Roe simply because Roe said it did and the Supreme Court is the final authority on interpreting Constitutional law, even though the Constitution itself provided no such right. | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 12:57 | comment | added | Deduplicator | @AndrewLeach 2 Lawyers, 3 Opinions. Much of law is in how it is interpreted, especially in the corner-cases, doubly so for far-reaching intentionally broad meta-law, and that interpretation can evolve. | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 12:29 | comment | added | Andrew Leach | @NateEldredge I think (from my side of the Atlantic) that Roe meant that individuals thought they had the constitutional right, but Dobbs corrected that misinterpretation of the law. The Dobbs judgement appears to be a comprehensive take-down of the reasoning behind the previous decision. The right hasn't been stripped, because it was never really there in the first place. | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 11:50 | comment | added | Nate Eldredge | @vsz: How so? Under Roe, individuals had a constitutional right to an abortion, which is why state laws could not constitutionally ban it. Under Dobbs they do not have a such a right. The word "strip" sounds to me like a fair description of that. | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 11:29 | comment | added | vsz | @reirab : this then makes many Democrat politicians' statements about the Dobbs decision stripping rights away, quite dubious. It does not give or strip away any rights whatsoever. | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 8:25 | comment | added | reirab | @vsz To more directly answer your question, though, no, this does not mean that the Constitution is meaningless or that Congress may ignore it. Congress passing a law, say, banning expressing some viewpoint would be illegal and unenforceable because the Constitution says that Congress can't do that (and also that states can't either.) The Constitution does not, however, address the issue of abortion at all, neither guaranteeing it as a right nor stating that it can't be allowed. Issues that aren't addressed in the Constitution are up to Congress (if within their powers) or the states. | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 8:18 | comment | added | reirab | @vsz I think you're misunderstanding either this answer or the Dobbs decision (or possibly both?) Dobbs didn't rule that abortion is banned or that Congress can't ban state laws restricting it. It simply ruled that the Constitution doesn't ban state laws restricting it (because, well, it doesn't.) This returned the matter to be handled via normal democratic processes in Congress and/or state legislatures, where legislation is supposed to happen. Neither Congress banning abortion nor banning state restrictions of it would "overturn or circumvent" Dobbs. That's exactly what Dobbs allows. | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 4:10 | comment | added | vsz | Does this mean that the constitution and the Supreme Court are completely meaningless? Maybe both should be abolished? They seem to be a nice-to-have if the party currently in power likes what the constitution says and how the Supreme Court interprets it, but if it doesn't like it, then it seems possible (according to this answer) to completely ignore or circumvent it. | |
| Sep 25, 2022 at 8:05 | comment | added | Josiah | It is perhaps worth mentioning the asymmetry with Roe itself. Under Roe. Congress could not have forbidden abortion. Dobbs is a bit of a special case in that it explicitly unshackled the legislatures and left them free to rule either way. | |
| Sep 25, 2022 at 0:40 | comment | added | Acccumulation | A non-hypothetical case (albeit one dealing only with statutory interpretation, and not the constitution) is the Lily Ledbetter law. Congress passed a law allowing people to sue for sex discrimination, but included a statute of limitations. A woman sued under the law, but SCOTUS ruled that the statute of limitations prohibited her suit. So Congress passed a new version of the law with a less restrictive statute of limitations. This didn't "overrule" SCOTUS's interpretation of the previous law, it created a new law. | |
| Sep 24, 2022 at 20:02 | history | answered | Nate Eldredge | CC BY-SA 4.0 |