Constitutional Challenges 
to State Legislation

Is the Supreme Court often called upon to review  
the constitutionality of laws passed by the legislature?

The Supreme Court often is called on to rule on the constitutionality of statutes adopted by the legislature.  
A person who brings a constitutional challenge faces a difficult legal burden.  Laws are presumed to be 
constitutional unless a clear violation of a specific provision of the Constitution can be proven.

From 1996 to 2011, the Supreme Court ruled on 63 cases in which an act of the legislature was under 
challenge on state constitutional grounds.  In those cases the court upheld the statute as constitutional in 
40 decisions, struck down the statute in 21 decisions and rendered a split decision in two cases, i.e., finding 
some parts of the statutes constitutional and other parts unconstitutional.

Revised November 2012



(Untitled)

This info page is part of the LIT Lab's Form Explorer project. It is not associated with the Pennsylvania state courts. To learn more about the project, check out our about page.

Downloads: You can download both the original form (last checked 2023-03) and the machine-processed form with normalized data fields.

---

About This Form:

• Sourced from www.pacourts.us (2023-03)
• Page(s): 1
• Fields(s): 1
• Average fields per page: 1
• Reading Level: Grade 13
• LIST Grouping(s): CO-00-00-00-00.

Use our Rate My PDF tool to learn more. Go beyond the above insights and learn more about this or any pdf form at RateMyPDF.com, includes: counts of difficult words used, passive voice decetion, and suggestions for how to make the form more usable.

---

Identified Data Fields:

We have done our best to automaticly identify and name form fields according to our naming conventions. When possible, we've used names tied to our question library. See e.g., user1_name. If we think we've found a match to a question in our library, it is highlighted in green. Novel names are auto generated. So, you will probably need to edit some of them if you're trying to stick to the convention.

---

Create an Interactive Version of this Form:

The Weaver creates a draft guided interview from a template form, like the one provided here. You can use the link below to open this form in the Weaver. To learn more, read "Weaving" your form into a draft interview.