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Since the start of the current Congress, Democratic lawmakers have pushed legislation that would override several recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Democrats want to allow state tort lawsuits over medical devices, restore a per se ban on vertical price-fixing, lower the standard for pleadings in civil suits, and allow suits against aiders and abettors of securities fraud, to name only a few proposals.

The bills have little in common except that they would all override the Supreme Court's interpretations of law. Each bill is an expression of liberals' frustration with the conservative direction of the court under Chief Justice John Roberts.

Many of the proposed overrides would benefit plaintiffs—a fact not lost on the business community. "While the plaintiffs' trial bar likes to tout the indispensability of the legal system in delivering 'justice,' it is quick to run to Congress to overturn court decisions that do not come out in its favor," said Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform, in a statement.

Still, even if lawmakers are successful, they have a long way to go before matching the number of overrides in previous years. In one of the few comprehensive studies of the phenomenon, Yale Law School professor William Eskridge, Jr., identified an average of 13 overrides per two-year congressional session from 1975 through 1990. His study also found that Congress was more likely to reverse rulings in which the Court split 5–4 or 6–3.

Lawmakers of both parties pursue overrides, though on different subjects. "The Republicans did a lot of the same thing on habeas corpus cases back in the 1990s," Eskridge says. "It's the same rhetoric. It's just a different political circumstance."

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