Civil Liberties
In reply to the discussion: For once I agree with Rand Paul. I also don't think Loretta Lynch should be Attorney General [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)It's most emphatically not the job of SCOTUS to overrule Congress just because it thinks Congress has made a mistake. For many years before and during the New Deal, the Court majority did that in striking down various social-welfare legislation (prohibitions on child labor and the like). The Court from that era would have overruled Congress on the very existence of the FLSA -- the entire statute would have been set aside, leaving no workers anywhere with any legal right to overtime pay.
Today, that line of cases is almost universally viewed as wrong. We elect Congress to make the laws. The Court can't "overrule" Congress except for the protection of rights under the Constitution (and even that exception has its critics). The current Supreme Court has departed from that understanding at times, for example in eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, and has been justifiably criticized for it.
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