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Comment by wl | Hacker News Reader

A supreme court case has benefits that legislation doesn't. If he can get a favorable decision for civil liberties, he could bind future congresses that may not be as friendly to civil liberties as he is. This also could be accomplished through a constitutional amendment, but a court case is far easier.

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for starters, Rand is proposing some legislation. A supreme court case is always non-binding to congress. They can just re-propose the law, and wait for someone to sue again (e.g. child labor laws in the 20s). Or the executive can just say, damn you supreme court we're gonna anyways (Jackson, early 19th century). And while a constitutional amendment would be nice, the only part of the constitution that the US follows anymore is 'election protocol' and details that create the pomp and circumstance around inauguration.

A SCOTUS decision IS binding to Congress. They can't pass a law doing something that has been deemed unconstitutional unless they first amend the Constitution to explicitly allow them to do that same thing, which is obviously not going to happen.

Actually, Congress can pass any law they damn well please. It's not until the courts deal with it that an unconstitutional law (in the opinion of a court interpreting law and precedent) can be thrown out.

My original post was operating under the assumption that all branches would abide by the legitimate actions of the other branches. Grandparent is pointing out that sometimes this doesn't happen. Always a possibility, but not something I expect to see very often.

Technically, Congress can pass any bill they damn well please, but it's not a law if it contradicts the Constitution.

Nope, the Founders were ... supremely suspicious of the Federal court system they were creating (e.g. lifetime tenure is double edged blade) and explicitly allowed the Congress to override it. Wikipedia has this under the words of art jurisdiction stripping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping

A SCOTUS decision is supposed to be binding to whatever act HAD been passed. Whether that happens in effect is entirely dependent on the (usually) executive branch complying with the SCOTUS ruling. Congress can, if it wanted, re-pass the law. Obviously, it would make a subsequent suit and overturning easier, but in reality, it can, and has happened in the past.

Oh, right. Congress can repass it, but provided the Executive branch respects the function and decision of the judiciary, the Supreme Court does have the final say over congressional acts that have been challenged.

Yeah, I should have been more clear about saying that a SCOTUS decision is non-binding to congress moving forward.

There are two types of decisions made by SCOTUS. In the first type, they rule on Constitutional grounds, in which case it is binding to Congress. In other cases they simply rule on the interperatation of laws themselves; so if Congress changes said laws, the ruling becomes irrelevent. The law in question here is 'interesting' in the sense that it tells the court how to interpret the Constitution. If it ever gets brought up before SCOTUS, my guess would be they would deem the law unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress cannot tell them how to interpret the Constitution. Granted, they would need to find something in the Constitution (or precedent) that says this, but I suspect that would be relativly simple.

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