CONGRESSIONAL ATTACKS ON SUPREME-COURT RULINGS INVOLVING UNCONSTITUTIONAL STATE LAWS

In recent years scholars of both the Supreme Court and the Congress ha ve begun to devote increasing attention to congressional attempts to r everse Court decisions declaring federal statutes unconstitutional, wh ile Court decisions involving state laws have not garnered nearly the same amount of attention. We know that the Court strikes down state la ws with far greater frequency than federal laws and that many of the m ost contentious issues facing the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the nation have arisen at the state level. It is our purpose to develop a model of congressional decision reversal action regarding all state l aws declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court from 1953 through 1 990. Using both probit and regression models we find that the electora l concerns of members of Congress, the nature of the issue the Court a ddresses and the degree of federal governmental impact of the Court de cision are all significant predictors of both the likelihood of a resp onse and the extent of the congressional response.