Quote:
Originally posted by ChuckElias
Quote:
Originally posted by hawkk
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.
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This last point is very interesting, hawk. Thanks for pointing it out. Can you think of an example? I'm no constitutional scholar, by any stretch. I'm working from my memories of 8th grade American Gov't class 
As for the first point about "changing" a Supreme Court decision, I don't think that's a fair description. Congress may revise parts of a law that have been found to be unconstitutional. But that is changing the law, not the high court's decision. They are simply making the law constitutional; they are not enforcing the law despite it's unconstitutional status. Right?
Chuck
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I can't think of an example -- I remember running into a situation several years ago where a lower court essentially dismissed a Supreme Court opinion as stale where the opinion had never been relied on again for the point and didn't make a lot of sense. (I can think of a potential future example: the Supreme Court said it was OK to intern the Japanese during the war; although that case has never been reversed, it has been so thoroughly condemned that I would imagine many lower courts would feel free to ignore it.) On the other point, you are right -- they are not changing or overruling the decision, per se, but they are modifying the law to get the result that they want. (Of course, if you read the newspaper, you will read that they Congress overruled the decision.) Where it usually happens is where a Court interprets a statute to mean something, and the legislature amends the statute. (In California, the legislature will try to get closer to overruling its Supreme Court, and pass laws that say the statute means such and such, and always meant such and such.)