Congress and the Supreme Court : Court Jurisdiction and School Prayer

Publication Date: June 1980

Publisher: Heritage Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): Thomas R. Ascik

Research Area: Government; Justice

Keywords: Legal issues

Type: Report

Abstract:

Over the past twenty-five years, the Supreme Court has been racing ahead of other governmental institutions in effecting changes in national social policy and in society itself. Indeed, the Court has been fashioning a national social policy for the first time, for through the succession of controversial Supreme Court decisions on desegregation, reapportionment, school prayer, capital punishment, criminal procedure, school busing, pornography, abortion, and reverse discrimination a common theme has been apparent: all these areas had been long-standing matters of individual state policy before the Court acted. By its decisions in the cases, the Court not only suddenly made them all matters of national policy, but it also defined what the new national policy would be in each case.