On the Difference in Importance between Supreme Court Doctrine and Actual Consequences: A Review of the Supreme Court's 1996-1997 Term

The general media appraisal of the Supreme Court's past Term was that it was important, dramatic, and possibly historic.A sampling of comments includes that this was the "most significant [Term] of the decade,"' the "most significant in [the Court's] recent history," 2 a Term with "decisions that, more than any in recent memory, will have an immediate and dramatic impact on American lives," 3 and one that "produced decisions with profound significance for the structure of American government."4 The New York Times concluded that "[p]erhaps the single most important fact about the term... is how important it was." 5 These descriptions were prompted primarily by a cadre of cases that struck down all or part of four acts of Congress; ad-