are there any states that allow broad powers to the supreme court? Are there any states where judges have broad powers to interpret the constitution to the point of even allowing them to exceed clear language and legislative intent ?
The United States would be one such country. I'm sure it is not the only one. In the case of countries with constitutional courts there is basically no one to second guess their interpretations which is also true when the apex court in a country provides an opinion. Since no one can overrule many of these courts, they are allowed to do what they want.
As Mark's answer indicates, you are evidently thinking of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. "Public acts" being laws, it may seem at first glance that states must fully respect the laws of other states. But the interpretation of this clause by the courts is rather different, and has evolved a bit over time. The short of the (modern) matter is that it mostly applies to matters concerning the judiciary. SCOTUS has recognized a "public policy exception" to the clause, which limits the ability of the clause to force a state to abide by laws which are in conflict with their own (for the most part: they don't have to). Driving privileges, and more generally who is licensed to do what (doctors, hunting, concealed carry, etc.), within a state falls under that public policy exception. So Texas does not have to obey New Hampshire's laws concerning the legal privilege to drive. As a basic sanity test, if this were not the case, then why wouldn't everybody in Texas not simply bounce off to New Hampshire for a summer to get their license there and then return to Texas and never bother with insurance? It entirely undercuts the state's sovereignty and ability to set their own laws if any other state can so easily create loopholes around them. Moreover, despite what the name might suggest, a "driver's license" is more a certification that you have the requisite skills, physical performance (passing an eye test), and knowledge to drive safely and in accordance with that state's traffic laws. It certainly makes sense for a state to require you to demonstrate at least that much, but they may also impose additional requirements. A requirement for insurance demonstrates your ability to handle financial liabilities that may reasonably result from your driving. All states currently accept a valid out-of-state license in the above sense: that you are certified to have the requisite skills, that it is valid proof of age, etc. Though if you become a permanent resident there they may require you to take new tests. However to legally drive in any particular state you must not only have such certification (a driver's license) but also satisfy any other conditions, such as age requirements and insurance requirements. As an aside, such state-by-state variations as to who is licensed to do what are in fact quite common, especially across history, even on very prominent issues. But even nationwide resolutions of those issues via SCOTUS have never, to my knowledge, utilized the Full Faith and Credit clause to do so. And, really, how could they? By saying since some state could force all other states to do X via the clause, then X must be a constitutional requirement? Or that any one state could unilaterally dictate laws in all other states? Madness! For one example, anti-miscegenation laws, which outlawed (certain) interracial marriages, were quite common until 1967, when SCOTUS struck them all down using the 14th amendment. More recently, gay marriage was forced to be recognized in all states, also via the 14th amendment. In both cases, before those SCOTUS rulings, the courts had generally recognized that the Full Faith and Credit clause did not compel the state to recognize (out-of-state) marriages it did not want to recognize. These both fell under the public policy exception.
So, as I understand the decision, it's a little more subtle than that. By default, states have sovereign immunity and can't be sued without their consent. Congress can remove ("abrogate") this immunity by law in some circumstances. They tried to do so for copyright infringement cases with the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990. However, in the present case of Allen v. Cooper, the Supreme Court held that this part of the CRCA is unconstitutional. The idea is that under the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress can abrogate state immunity when it's necessary to ensure people's right to due process, but only in a "congruent and proportional" way. Now if a state unintentionally or negligently infringes someone's copyright, that does not violate the person's right to due process, but an intentional infringement might. At the time the CRCA was passed, when Congress went looking for instances where states infringed on copyrights, they found several cases of unintentional or negligent infringement, and just a couple where they may have infringed intentionally. SCOTUS argued that to respond to this by completely abrogating state immunity in all copyright cases was disproportionate, and therefore unconstitutional. But the Court suggests in the opinion that Congress could pass a different law to abrogate immunity in copyright cases, if it were narrower. For instance, a law that only stripped immunity in cases of intentional infringement would likely be constitutional, especially if there were evidence that intentional infringement was happening enough to be a significant problem. So I think the answer is that as of right now, a state could deliberately infringe someone's copyright (e.g. by pirating software) and be immune from suit. However, Congress has the power to "fix" this, and most likely will, especially if there seems to be egregious abuse. (By the way, the decision contains an impressive quantity of pirate jokes. I guess since it's not only about copyright infringement (aka "piracy"), but actually alleges infringement of a video about a sunken pirate ship, the justices just couldn't resist.) Your "eminent domain" idea is separate from this. Seizing copies of the software wouldn't give the state the right to use them, as the software itself would still be copyrighted. The state would have to seize the copyright, and I don't know whether that is possible - it's not necessarily property in that sense. But if they did so, then they wouldn't be infringing the copyright at all (since the state itself would now own the copyright) and this case would be irrelevant. On the other hand, when a state uses eminent domain to seize property, they must as you say pay fair market value for it, and that means the market value before they seized it. So the value of the copyright in such a case wouldn't be "nothing" - it would be more like the amount a competitor would have had to pay the software maker to buy all the rights to that product. Likewise, if the state seizes your lovely house and bulldozes it to build a toxic waste dump, they owe you what someone would have paid for the house, not the value of a dump that nobody wants.
The Supreme Court does not handle hypotheticals. The court has interpreted Article III Section 2 Clause 1 of the Constitution, the Case or Controversy Clause as a limit on the powers of the judicial branch. The courts have jurisdiction over various types of cases and controversies but only those listed in the Constitution. This limits courts to hearing actual cases and prevents them from issuing advisory opinions. Additionally, in order to bring a case, the plaintiff must have standing to bring the suit. You can't sue the government just because you don't like a law (well, you can, your suit will just be dismissed because it lacks standing). You have to show That you have been, or will imminently be, injured (injury-in-fact) That there is a direct correlation between that injury and the law (causation) And that a favorable court decision will redress the injury (redressability) As a practical matter, the courts are already overwhelmed by the number of actual cases that come up and the Supreme Court can only hear a tiny fraction of the cases they are asked to hear. If they added the ability to hear hypothetical cases as well, the court could easily be overwhelmed by Senators and Representatives asking them to weigh in on every remotely controversial bill or amendment before Congress or interest groups bringing cases for speculative grievances.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia: Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited ... Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. (emphasis mine)
This would establish a new precedent (I assume) You assume correctly. However, a precedent is only binding on lower courts and persuasive on courts at the same level so a trial judge precedent is not very far-reaching. Does this statute takes precedence over (overrules) the previous court precedent? Not exactly. The precedent was good for the old (common) law. Now the law has changed and the old precedent is irrelevant. Courts only interpret the law and legislatures are free to change the law within the limits of their constitutional power. Indeed, a fair number of laws are enacted because the legislature does not agree with how courts are ruling.
You are confusing a few concepts. One is the distinction between what are known as &quot;common law&quot; jurisdictions derived from the English legal system, and &quot;civil law&quot; jurisdictions derived from one of the continental European legal systems that is ultimately derived from Roman law. Another is the distinction between determining the meaning of ambiguous legislation, which all courts do by definition, and the power of judicial review, which overturns legislation which is invalid for some reason rather than merely trying to interpret an ambiguous provision. Ambiguous means &quot;unclear&quot; or &quot;capable of being interpreted in more than one way&quot; and every time every court encounters unclear legislation it must decide what it means, even if it is not invalidated. In contrast, some judiciaries that have the power of judicial review and those that do not. Judiciaries that can declare a law to be invalid have the power of judicial review. Judiciaries that cannot declare a law to be invalid do not have the power of judicial review. Every state and federal U.S. Court at every level (not just the U.S. Supreme Court) has the power and obligation to declare that a law violated the U.S. Constitution. In many countries, no court, or only a &quot;constitutional court&quot; has the power to make declare legislation to be invalid by exercising judicial review. Every time that a legislature passes a statute on a subject covered by common law (i.e. judge-made law derived from case decisions that serve as precedents), it shrinks the scope of common law relative to statutes. And, in principle, almost all of the common law could be replaced by statutes without all that much difficulty. But, in civil law countries, statutes are frequently comprehensive and are the sole source of legal authority about their subject matter superseding all case law, while in common law countries, statutes are often piecemeal tweaks to a common law background that is assumed by the statute. For example, every civil law country would have a comprehensive statute setting forth the principles of contract law, while a typical common law jurisdiction might have a statute that declares that certain contracts must be in writing but does not comprehensively set forth the law of contracts in all circumstances. There are some features of civil law countries, such as the absence of jury trials, which cannot be constitutionally changed to the civil law system, even in jurisdictions such a Puerto Rico and Louisiana in the United States which have civil law roots prior to joining the U.S. (at least in criminal cases and in the federal courts). The power of judicial review (i.e. the power of courts to declare a statute unconstitutional and void) is also inherent in the U.S. Constitutional system of government and could not be removed without a constitutional amendment. There are common law countries, e.g., England, which did not historically have the power of judicial review, which was an innovation for a common law countries such as the United States when it was first invoked. (For what it is worth, India goes one step further; its Supreme Court asserts and exercises the right to declare portions of its own constitution to be unconstitutional.) There are other aspects of civil law legal systems which would probably also be declared unconstitutional in the United States as well, such as the lack of a prohibition on the introduction of hearsay evidence in criminal trials which violates a provision of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights known as the &quot;confrontation clause.&quot; It is unclear to me whether the principle that case law precedents have binding legal effect in future cases, which is part of the common law system that is absent in the civil law system, has a constitutional dimension or could be displaced by law. But, most aspects of a civil law legal system could be adopted in the United States if the relevant legislatures so desired. Indeed, many aspects of the U.S. legal system have moved in that direction. For example, only a handful of U.S. states now recognize the concept of a &quot;common law crime&quot;. Almost all states now only allow criminal sanctions for crimes codified by statute, which was not the case at the time of the American Revolution, when few crimes were codified. Obviously, with a constitutional amendment, almost any change to the U.S. legal system is possible.
No. The Fourteenth Amendment says: nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; The Supreme Court has determined that this clause incorporates much of the Bill of Rights. The logic is mildly tortured, but it's basically that "due process of law" means "due process of a law that is compatible with the fundamental rights of a free society." This logic is known as "substantive due process," because it reads in to "due process of law" requirements about what those laws can do (as opposed to procedural due process, which is about the actual procedures being used). It's pretty settled that the Bill of Rights, after the 14th Amendment, should apply to the states. There's another possible way to get there: the 14th Amendment says "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," which Justice Thomas recently thought meant that the Second Amendment applies to the states in a concurring opinion. But as of now, substantive due process is the standard logic for it. Virtually all of the Bill of Rights is incorporated against the states. There are a couple things which aren't (like juries in lawsuits, and grand juries), but the Establisment Clause is incorporated (see Everson v. Board of Education, 330 US 1).