Can congress enact a law reducing the power of scotus if it wanted to ?

27 comments

1. Not exactly… they’d have to propose an amendment which would need 34+ states to sign off on along with potus.

2. Short answer, no.

   Long answer: what exactly do you mean by “reduce”?

3. I would assume not. Their powers were granted by the Constitution, not through legislation. It would take an amendment to change that.

   Might be wrong, though.

4. Not really. The President’s powers are defined by the Constitution and I suppose those could be changed, but it would be difficult under normal circumstances and next to impossible currently.

   Congress can override presidential vetoes, so in a way congress has the ability to ignore a specific power of the executive, but that requires a two-thirds vote in each house and is, again, not super likely to happen given our current divisions.

   So, in a strict sense, the answer is no, and in a looser sense, the answer is still no.

5. Not likely without a civil war. The powers of the President, the Congress, and the Supreme Court are defined in the Constitution.

6. It’s designed to not be possible. Theoretically they could, but I can’t imagine it ever happening

7. Depends on what you consider “reducing the power.”

   The answer is no. However, if the current administration wanted to expand the court (add justices) then in a sense they could change the court from a conservative body to a liberal body.

8. TECHNICALLY the only mention of SCOTUS in the constitution is just it’s establishment and how to pick new justices. Their actual powers in regards to deciding if something is constitutional or not comes from the constitutional crisis in ~~1789~~ 1803

   Tl;dr- kind of

   [Relevant link establishing the precedent of judicial review](https://www.britannica.com/event/Marbury-v-Madison)

9. A law? No. A law limiting SCOTUS’s power would be found unconstitutional by that same SCOTUS for violating separation of powers. You’d need an amendment, and Congress can’t do that alone. The closest you can get with a law is court packing, though that doesn’t limit the court. It just sways its verdicts.

   That said, there *are* procedural ways to interfere with SCOTUS, often through to the confirmation process. Congress can also arbitrarily define what “good behavior” means for the purpose of impeachment, but if they go too far off the rails on that front, SCOTUS could step in to defend the Justices and set its own superseding definition for “good behavior.”

10. There are many things that Congress could do. Including court packing, messing around with jurisdiction, or court de packing.

    There may be constitutional issues with those plans.

    Everyone is saying “it is in the constitution!” A lot of it isn’t. The constitution is surprisingly vague on some major points. But messing with our current system would be a naked power grab by the legislature and I don’t think people necessarily want to do that. You might think it’s a good idea in the moment but it isn’t.

    Also on a purely political stance, destroying the judiciary will destroy the republic. In the history of bad ideas it would be high on the list.

    This is how Hugo Chavez became a dictator, and that didn’t work out great for Venezuela.

11. Yes, but probably not in the way you’re thinking. It isn’t possible for Congress to make a law such as “The Supreme Court is no longer able to hear cases on land disputes between states,” because that sort of authority is constitutionally vested in them. The only way for Congress to reduce the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction would be through the adoption of constitutional amendment, which is subject to approval by state legislatures as well.

    The way that Congress can reduce the power that the Supreme Court currently has is to pass laws on key societal issues. The Supreme Court’s political power to ‘legislate from the bench’ only comes about when these issues are left undecided upon by Congress, giving their plaintiffs no available recourse other than the judicial system. If Congress were to codify its views on hot-button issues (same-sex marriage, abortion, police reform, etc.) towards one side or the other then gray areas wouldn’t exist as frequently, and the grievances of people impacted by them wouldn’t ever make it as far as the Supreme Court so long as the legislation passed was constitutional.

    In our history an activist court has always been the result of an ineffective legislature. Demanding more concrete actions from our politicians in the form of well-written and explicit legislation actively reduces the gray area that justices can use to leverage their own political agendas.

12. Yes and no. They can pass laws that explicitly override certain rulings, they can control the amount of justices on the bench. They *cannot* change how they are appointed, or how long they serve, or anything else unless they pass an amendment to the US Constitution, which is much harder than normal legislation.

13. Yes to an extent. The Judicial Act of 1789 is a major source of federal judicial power, and that can always be repealed. It’s important in defining federal jurisdiction. Congress can also issue laws that affect rulings like *international shoe* which have a direct impact on the cases the court can take

14. Answer undefined.

    Basically, any attempt at wiggling out additional power that Congress has over SCOTUS would eventually go to the SCOTUS for review of constitutionality. It’s a co-equal branch of government, after all.

    SCOTUS would be ruling on its own power, which gets funky because the only explicit reason SCOTUS has this final right of review is because it gave itself this power in a very early court case. Everybody ran with that based on the precedent of “it’s *fine,*” but sometimes it looms large in the background of certain scenarios.

    For example, SCOTUS ruled that Georgia could not enforce its laws within sovereign Nativr American territory, which was established by federal treaty. Georgia said “nuh-uh” and SCOTUS had no way of enforcing it’s own ruling. That’s a pretty big gap in our political model if it deliberately set up to give SCOTUS that last word.

15. Not really. 3 branches of government each with checks and balances on the other.

16. no. nor should they.

17. No. Except after passing an amendment to the Constitution which would have to be ratified by the legislatures of 38 states. We’ve been working on the Equal Rights Amendment since 1923, so Magic 8 Ball says “My sources say no.”

18. Here’s the way to frame that question: could Congress pass a law stating that the Supreme Court did not have the exclusive authority to interpret the Constitution? The actual text of the Constitution doesn’t say anything about who gets to interpret it, and it certainly doesn’t say anything about the judiciary having the power to strike down laws enacted by Congress.

19. They can expand the court and impeach and remove judges, but it would require a constitutional amendment to reduce its power. That would require consent from the state legislatures.

20. Yes, in a few ways.

    The biggest one is that a lot of the decisions SCOTUS makes are basically interpreting the Constitution and written lay in a specific way. In most cases, Congress could make a law specifying how it should be interpreted or ruling otherwise. For example; SCOTUS ruled that abortion is not protected by the Constitution. Congress could, however, pass a law protecting abortion itself. It’s arguable how much this really “limits SCOTUS’ power”, since SCOTUS itself is essentially saying “Congress ought to decide this”, but it does mitigate the effect that SCOTUS has on day-to-day life, so it sort of counts.

    Another thing Congress could do is write law about the composition of the Court. There are 9 justices by convention, but the Constiturion doesn’t say how many there have to be — theoretically, the President could nominate as many as he likes as long as he can get the Senate to confirm them. Congress could write a law regulating that (and Congress has actually done so several times in the past).

    Furthermore, part of it is just political. Unlike Congress and the Executive, the Supreme Court doesn’t control any money (Congress) or law enforcement (executive branch), which means it only works because everyone agrees to listen to it. Traditionally, part of how the Court maintains its legitimacy is by projecting the image of being nonpolitical and impartial. So one of the ways Congress has reined in the Court in the past was by threatening to do things like court-packing that would destroy that image of being nonpolitical.

    And finally, Congress controls the power of the purse. If it were a really extreme scenario where Congress was trying to rein in an out-of-control SCOTUS, it could literally defund the court. That would literally mean the supreme court would have no money to pay staffers, interns, the power and heating bills, etc, not to mention the justices themselves.

    That would also probably immediately trigger a constitutional crisis, and I honestly have no idea how it would play out.

21. My understanding(I could be wrong) is that congress can’t just pass a law reducing the power of SCOTUS. They’d have to amend the Constitution which is a very complicated and difficult process.

22. No.

    Our government is made up of three CO-EQUAL branches. The powers of those branches are laid out in the Constitution. Laws do not change the Constitution.

23. Any attack on the supreme court is just so short sighted. The other side will just keep doing it and it’ll go back and forth forever

24. In general, no. Chief Justice William Marshal arrogated the interpretation of the constitution to SCOTUS in the very early 1800’s to fill a constitutional omission. The damage is done. I think it would take a constitutional amendment to change that at this point.

25. The only way they could court pack in a non-sus way is to expand to 13 with one justice per federal district (like they used to) but have one appointment each presidential term beginning after this election.

26. Yes.

    1) Congress can jurisdiction strip (prevent laws from being enforced in federal court/preventing appeals under Article III);

    2) Pass laws overriding or clarifying a SCOTUS decision;

    3) Send an amendment to the states.

    Congress is the first brach for a reason. With enough votes, it controls all other branches.

27. Nooo?