The Civil Rights Act of 1991 overrode twelve recent Supreme Court decisions interpreting federal civil rights and related statutes. This statute, as well as other recent congressional override efforts, presents scholars with an opportunity to revisit longstanding debates about congressional awareness of and responsiveness to Supreme Court statutory interpretation decisions, theories of the legislative process and the interaction between the Court and Congress, and the implications of these debates for the theory and practice of statutory interpretation. Overriding Supreme Court Statutory Interpretation Decisions is an empirical and theoretical study of congressional overrides of Supreme Court statutory interpretation decisions between 1967 and 1990. The Article makes several contributions to our understanding of the Court/Congress dynamics and statutory interpretation. First, the Article is a thorough catalogue and analysis of overrides. The study finds that 121 Supreme Court statutory interpretation decisions were overridden during this period, an average of ten per Congress. From this data and from a more selective survey of failed override efforts, the Article concludes that congressional committees in fact carefully monitor Supreme Court decisions and that Congress is particularly prone to override decisions that reflect a closely divided Court favoring conservative interpretations, decisions that rely on the statute's plain meaning and canons of statutory construction, and decisions that reject positions taken by federal, state, and local governments. Second, the Article uses data and case studies to synthesize a theoretical model that deepens our understanding of the interaction between the Court, Congress, and the President in statutory interpretation. The model posits that a dynamic game exists among the Court, the relevant congressional committees, Congress, and the President. Under this "Court/Congress/President game," ultimate statutory policy is set through a sequential process by which each player tries to impose its policy preferences on the others. The game is a dynamic one, because each player is responsive to the preferences of the other players and because the preferences of the players change as information is generated and distributed. Third, the Article applies the empirical and theoretical analysis to rethink issues of statutory interpretation. Descriptively, a central theme is that the Court's statutory interpretation decisions are more responsive to the expectations of the current Congress and President than to those of the enacting Congress. Normatively, the Court's role emerges as an important institution contributing to the operation of our pluralist political system. This role is subject to question. While rejecting the criticism that the Court should only attend to statutory text or original intent, this Article argues that the Court's practice fails to give sufficient attention to interests unrepresented in our pluralist system.
