The term ''super statute'' was applied in 2001 by
William Eskridge and
John Ferejohn to characterize an ordinary statute whose effort "to establish a new normative or institutional framework ... 'stick
in the public culture" and has "a broad effect on the law".
[''Super Statutes.'' Eskridge and Ferejohn. 50 Duke L. J. 1215](_blank)
/ref> As a result, it has a "quasi-constitutional" significance that exceeds its formal status as a statute.
Other uses
According to Eskridge and Ferejohn, previous legal commentators had used the term "super-statute" for other purposes. Some writers have used the term to describe a constitution, e.g., A. E. Dick Howard, ''The Road from Runnymede: Magna Carta and the Constitutionalism in America'' (1968, pg.122) (stating that American lawyers in the eighteenth century viewed Magna Carta
(Medieval Latin for "Great Charter of Freedoms"), commonly called (also ''Magna Charta''; "Great Charter"), is a royal charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by ...
and the common law
In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions."The common law is not a brooding omniprese ...
it was thought to embody "as a kind of superstatute, a constitution placing fundamental liberties beyond the reach of Parliament"). Other writers believe it's simply a big statute with no force outside its four corners, e.g., Bruce A. Ackerman, "Constitutional Politics/Constitutional Law", 99 ''Yale Law Journal'' 453, 522 (1989) ("Superstatutes do not seek to revise any of the deeper principles organizing our higher law; instead, they content themselves with changing one or more rules without challenging basic premises.").
References
Statutory law
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