Judicial Decisions as Tax Legislation

Abstract:     
In this article, Professors Staudt, Lindstaedt, and O'Connor undertake a comprehensive study of congressional responses to Supreme Court cases and make a surprising finding: Overrides, although the sole focus in the extant literature, account for just a small portion of the legislative activity in response to the Court. In fact, Congress is just as likely to support and affirm judicial decision-making through the codification of a case outcome as they are to undermine a decision through an override. To investigate fully the nature of congressional oversight of Supreme Court decision-making, the authors undertake both qualitative and quantitative analyses of all the different types of legislative review in the economic context. In doing this the authors make a series of important and robust findings that challenge and build on the Court-Congress literature. They identify the legal, political, and economic factors that explain why legislators take notice of Supreme Court cases, and are able to predict the factors that are correlated with congressional activity.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 51

Keywords: courts, congress, tax, economics, empirical

JEL Classification: C12, H20, K00

Accepted Paper Series