[hawkk]

Originally posted by ChuckElias

It's also, I think, not strictly true. A Supreme Court ruling is not over-ridden by a legislative measure, is it? The only way to take a Supreme Court ruling out of effect is for the Supreme Court to re-consider its previous ruling or to go through the process of amending the U.S. Constitution. I suppose another alternative would be to hold a constitutional convention, but I honestly don't know what the effect of that would be.

Chuck [/B]

Not exactly. A Supreme Court ruling INTERPRETING THE CONSTITUTION cannot be overridden by legislation (though Congress has on very rare occaisons found a way to do an endrun that effectively does so -- alas I cannot think of an example right now). The Supreme Court regularly interprets statutes (and occaisonally agency rules), and Congress (or the agency) is free to revise those statutes (or rules) to "change," the Supreme Court decision. . . . Also, on rare occaisons, lower courts have essentially said that a Supreme Court decision was "stale" and no longer good law even though it was never actually reversed by the Supreme Court. But this is very rare and requires very old opinions that have been ignored by the Supreme Court since they were issued.