Premium
Pulling Punches: Congressional Constraints on the Supreme Court's Constitutional Rulings, 1987–2000
Author(s) -
HARVEY ANNA,
FRIEDMAN BARRY
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.3162/036298006x201922
Subject(s) - supreme court , statute , law , political science , legislature , constraint (computer aided design) , constitutional law , mathematics , geometry
To date, no study has found evidence that the U.S. Supreme Court is constrained by Congress in its constitutional decisions. We addressed the selection bias inherent in previous studies with a statute‐centered, rather than a case‐centered, analysis, following all congressional laws enacted between 1987 and 2000. We uncovered considerable congressional constraint in the Court's constitutional rulings. In particular, we found that the probability that the Rehnquist Court would strike a liberal congressional law rose between 47% and 288% as a result of the 1994 congressional elections, depending on the legislative model used.