Can the US Supreme Court declare that all laws are unconstitutional?

Answer 1

Not really. Although the US Supreme Court has the power of judicial review, which means they can analyze any particular law in terms of its constitutionality and nullify those that are unconstitutional. But that doesn't mean they can go willy-nilly through the US Code, deleting stuff at random.

First, the justices have to wait for someone to challenge the law in court, exhaust their lower court appeals (except for the few cases the may go directly from District Court to the Supreme Court), and petition the Supreme Court to review their case. The Supreme Court can't go on a scouting mission, looking for laws to overturn, and they can't enter into conspiracies with other people in an effort to have specific statutes challenged.

Second, the law has to be genuinely unconstitutional. Enough members of the Court would have to vote that it violates rights in a significant way, and then write a convincing opinion, citing precedents (earlier cases) upon which they can base their decisions.

There are several problems with this scenario. The first is that many laws on the books have already been thoroughly vetted, making it difficult or impossible for a court to overturn the law on sane grounds.

Another problem is that, left to chance, there's no way the population would challenge every law, so at least five of the nine Justices would have to be in on a conspiracy to overturn perfectly good laws, which is unlikely to happen.

Aside from the fact that Supreme Court justices take their responsibilities seriously and try to maintain high professional ethical standards, they also have different political ideologies. In the highly unlikely event five crazy justices conspired to overturn every law in the country, the other four would scream and holler and raise such a ruckus about their illegal behavior that the five crazy justices would quickly find themselves impeached, tried and removed from office.

It's interesting to wonder what would happen if you woke up to a country where every law had been overturned, but the possibility of that happening under our current system of government is nil.

The court has established standards for determining if a law is constitutional. The minimum standard that all laws must meet is that a law must be rationally related to a legitimate public purpose. Without this requirement, congress could pass a law requiring everybody to wear their underware on the outside and nothing in the constitution would invalidate such a law. Where specific enumerated rights are involved higher standards apply before a law can pass constitutional muster. For instance, inhibitions on free speech, association, petitioning government and religion (the 1st Amendment Rights) must meet the above standard that applies to all laws and must also be "narrowly tailored" so as not to inhibit those freedoms anymore than is absolutely necessary to accomplish the public purpose. Some standards, like those applied to official acts that may result in discrimination by class (race for instance), heighten the "legitimate public purpose" side of the test. For racial discrimination, there must be a compelling state interest justifying the law.

The law is supposed to be a rational production, and usually is, though many examples of courts acting otherwise can be cited.

Answer 2

No. Any court can declare a law unconstitutional if the law is part of a case they're trying or reviewing; however, the government would probably appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court to get a definitive answer. The US Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality, and has final authority over questions of constitutionality.