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The Supreme Court's power of judicial review allows the court the power of interpreting the Constitution and determining whether any act of the Congress, the executive, or the state governments is in violation of the Constitution. Four of the twenty-seven amendments to the Constitution have overturned Supreme Court decisions. Two other proposed but unratified amendments also sought to overturn decisions of the Supreme Court.
The Eleventh Amendment
During the Revolution, wartime government of Georgia, the Executive
Council, purchased supplies from a South Carolina businessman. Georgia
received the supplies, but did not pay for them. After the businessman's
death, the executor of his estate, Alexander Chisholm sued the state of
Georgia for payment in Federal Court. Georgia maintained that the federal
courts had no jurisdiction, but the Supreme Court, to the surprise of many,
ruled in 1793 that federal courts could hear cases in which an citizen
of one state sues the government of another. In response to the decision,
Congress proposed an amendment that would overrule the decision of Chisholm
v. Georgia. The amendment was ratified in 1795. For more information,
read William F. Swindler's, "Mr.
Chisholm and the Eleventh Amendment," from the 1981 Yearbook of the
Supreme Court Historical Society.
The Fourteenth Amendment
In the infamous case of Dred
Scott v. Sandford of 1857, the majority of the Supreme Court
ruled that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom since slaves
were not citizens of the United States. After the civil war, Congress and
the states added the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which confers
citizenship on all persons born or naturalized in the United States.
The Sixteenth Amendment
In 1895, in the case of Pollock
v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., the Supreme Court ruled that
taxes on the income of individual citizens were a violation of Article
I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which states that direct taxes must be
laid on the states in proportion to population. Congress proposed the Sixteenth
Amendment in 1909 and it was ratified by the states in 1913, giving the
power to Congress to levy a direct national income tax.
The Twenty-sixth Amendment
In 1970, Congress passed a revision of the Voting Rights Act which
allowed eighteen-year-olds to vote in federal, state, and local elections.
The Supreme Court held, however, that Congress did not have the power to
declare a voting age in state and local elections. The Twenty-sixth Amendment,
which overruled this decision, quickly passed, in large part because eighteen-year-olds
were currently losing their lives in Vietnam.
Other Amendment Proposals
The Child Labor Amendment proposed in 1924 was an attempt to overturn
the decision of Hammer
v. Dagenhart (1918) which stated that Congress did not have
the power to regulate or prohibit the interstate shipment of goods produced
by child labor. The Equal Rights Amendment proposed in 1972 was also, at
least in part, a response to adverse Supreme Court decisions. In Goesaert
v. Cleary (1948) the Court upheld a Michigan law making it illegal
for women to work as bartenders; in Hoyt
v. Florida (1961) the Court found Florida's practice of
excluding women from jury duty Constitutional; in Williams v.
McNair (1971) the Court allowed South Carolina to maintain single-sex
state colleges.
More recently, Congress has considered, but not proposed amendments
to overturn other Court decisions. A School Prayer Amendment would overturn
the decision of Engel
v. Vitale (1962), which prohibits public schools prompting
school children to engage in prayer. A Right to Life Amendment would overturn
the decision of Roe
v. Wade (1973), which allows women a right to abort their
pregnancies. A Flag Desecration Amendment would overturn the decision ofTexas
v. Johnson (1989), which found that the mutilation
of the American flag is free speech protected by the First Amendment.
