Instead of being pressed into responding to court cases and compensation claims, the government should use its authority to overturn this outdated and uncivilised ban.
Moreover, Congress must monitor the courts, and use its power to overturn decisions that thwart Congress' goals.
In the early 1990s, environmental groups pushed this contentious struggle on to the chief justices of the European Union, hoping to use it as a wedge to overturn Ireland's former position that golf courses, being essentially agricultural, needed no formal zoning regulations for anything other than their clubhouse configurations and access rights.
And the Loewen Group, a large funeral home operator throughout North America that is based in Canada, is trying to use Nafta to overturn a huge judgment against it for anticompetitive practices.
There was much upset among readers that in the wake of its Lords defeats last week the government sought to defy the will of the house last week by announcing it would use special powers to overturn the amendments in the Commons?
However, the decision could have implications that reach far beyond gene patenting if it is used to overturn the century-old legal doctrine that allows the patenting of all sorts of biological substances isolated from nature.
William C. Banks, a specialist on national security law at Syracuse University, said that the memorandum shed critical light on the Bush administration but that it was "far fetched" to think it might be used to overturn convictions of soldiers for abuse at Abu Ghraib or elsewhere.
Instead, it's an open attempt to use raw obstructionism to overturn the law.
Heedless of the situation in Washington, Hancock soon put his words into action, refusing local Republican politicians' requests to use his power to overturn elections and court verdicts, while also letting it be known that open insurrection would be suppressed.
The measures make use of a parliamentary tool under the Congressional Review Act that lawmakers can use to overturn regulations.
