However, when the Court interprets a statute, new legislative measures can be taken. When the Supreme Court rules on a constitutional question, that judgment is practically final; its decisions can only be modified through the rarely used constitutional amendment procedure, or through a new judgment of the Court. The federal judiciary functions separately from the executive and legislative branches, but often works with them as required by the Constitution. Federal laws are passed by Congress and signed by the President.
The judiciary decides the constitutionality of federal laws and resolves other disputes over federal laws. However, judges rely on the executive branch of our government to enforce court decisions. A particularly famous example of an argument based on the spirit of the law is contained in the Court's decision in Bolling c. Conversely, programmers are generally not expected to assess whether legislative actions affect the precedent value of court decisions; generally, an overturned precedent will not be established unless or until a court affirms in a decision that the new legal language has replaced an earlier judicial interpretation.
Each of the three coordinated branches of government created and empowered by the Constitution, the executive and the legislature, no less than the judiciary, have the duty to interpret the Constitution in the performance of their official functions. Since judicial annulment is a reinterpretation of existing law, it normally takes effect immediately; the Court's new interpretation will apply to all pending disputes, including those that arise from facts prior to the new opinion. Many of the arguments in the debate about trust in the national spirit in constitutional interpretation share similarities with the arguments presented about the use of moral reasoning as a mode of interpretation. Another example of how the Court is based on national spirit as its foundation is the case of the West Virginia State Board of Education c.
This report does not examine in detail the reliance on such comments or on the precedents of state or foreign courts in constitutional interpretation. It also may not be clear how an annulment should be interpreted when Congress modifies a law to replace a judicial interpretation, but it does not make comparable amendments to other laws that are normally interpreted in pari matter. Textualism is a mode of legal interpretation that focuses on the clear meaning of the text of a legal document.
