Legislature-Court Relations Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The relationship between courts and legislatures in the United States is sometimes cordial but often strained. Most court-legislative interactions are routine. For example, courts regularly interpret statutes written by Congress. If Congress is unhappy with a federal court’s statutory interpretation decision, the legislature can simply enact a new statute. Under their power of judicial review, the federal courts also can declare an act of Congress to be unconstitutional. If Congress is unhappy with a constitutionally based court decision, in theory the legislature must pass a constitutional amendment to override that ruling. Sometimes Congress will pass a mere statute in an attempt to overturn a court decision, but Congress may be trying also to convince the court to change its ruling on its own. Louis Fisher (1988), among others, argues that the courts do not have the last word on the meaning of the Constitution, but instead constitutional interpretation is achieved through an ongoing conversation or dialogue among the branches of government.

Another routine interaction between Congress and the federal courts occurs annually when Congress provides all funding for the judicial branch. The Constitution prevents Congress from lowering the salaries of federal judges and they serve life terms, but it does not require annual cost-of-living raises. Recently federal judges including chief justices William H. Rehnquist and John Roberts have been quite vocal that judicial salaries are too low. Congress also can create new judgeships or change the boundaries of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. At times, Congress threatens to express its displeasure with particular court decisions by withholding pay raises for judges or by making other changes in judicial branch funding. For example, in 1964 Congress gave Supreme Court justices half the cost-of-living increase that it gave to lower federal judges. Finally, the U.S. Senate must confirm all presidential judicial appointments. Congress can use its confirmation power to attempt to influence the future decisions of the courts.

Sometimes the relationship between the federal courts and the Congress becomes tense. Members of Congress regularly criticize federal court decisions with which they disagree. But Congress also has the power to attack the judicial branch in other ways. For example, Congress can determine the jurisdiction of the federal courts, which means that Congress can decide which cases the federal courts can and cannot hear. Preventing the federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, from hearing a class of cases is called jurisdiction stripping or court stripping. Members of Congress have long threatened to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over a variety of cases, such as those dealing with abortion or religion or the Pledge of Allegiance, but have rarely done so. Beginning in the late 1990s, however, Congress did pass various statutes limiting the ability of the federal courts to hear certain types of cases. Congress had not enacted court-stripping legislation since the Civil War (1861–1865) era. It is unclear whether the U.S. Supreme Court will declare such actions to be unconstitutional.

Congress also has threatened to increase its oversight of court decisions and practices. Congressional oversight of executive branch activities is considered routine because those decisions are clearly political in nature. However, Congress has generally refrained from excessive oversight of the courts because judges must be able to make impartial decisions based on legal considerations. The House Judiciary Committee in 2006 passed legislation that would have created an inspector general for the federal courts. An inspector general for the federal judiciary would be an extraordinary step that opponents said would weaken the key principle of judicial independence.

Congress also has the power to impeach federal judges and then remove them from office. Congress has not impeached a federal judge except for high crimes or misdemeanors since the highly political impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase in 1803. Chase was not removed from office in a close vote in the Senate. Many interest groups recently have called for the impeachment of judges because of their decisions. Congress has opened several impeachment investigations recently, but no federal judges have been removed from office to date except for illegal activity. Thus, when Congress is extremely upset with the federal courts, it has a variety of tools at its disposal to attack the courts as an institution.

Bibliography:

Barnes, Jeb. Overruled? Legislative Overrides, Pluralism, and Court-Congress Relations in an Age of Statutes. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004.
Campbell, Colton C., and John F. Stack Jr., eds. Congress Confronts the Court: The Struggle for Legitimacy and Authority in Lawmaking. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
Devins, Neal, and Keith E.Whittington, eds. Congress and the Constitution. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005.
Fisher, Louis. Constitutional Dialogues: Interpretation as Political Process. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Geyh, Charles G. When Courts and Congress Collide:The Struggle for Control of America’s Judicial System. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Katzmann, Robert A., ed. Judges and Legislators: Toward Institutional Comity. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1988.
Langer, Laura. Judicial Review in State Supreme Courts: A Comparative Study. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Miller, Mark C. “Conflicts between the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Legislature: Campaign Finance Reform and Same-sex Marriage.” Pierce Law Review 4 (2006): 279–316.
Miller, Mark C., and Jeb Barnes, eds. Making Policy, Making Law: An Interbranch Perspective. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2004.
Pickerill, J. Mitchell. Constitutional Deliberation in Congress: The Impact of Judicial Review in a Separated System. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004.

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