Chicago--There is a Hawaii bill that would allow a relatively small number of state legislators to require the legislature to take a vote on whether to affirm or override a court decision that a particular law is unconstitutional. If the vote overrides the decision, then the bill says that the law will continue to bind everyone, except that the actual parties to the case on which the court ruled will be bound by the court's decision.
It's true that legislatures can often effectively override court decisions. They can do so when the court decisions have construed statutes in certain ways of which the legislatures disapprove; the legislatures can then make it clearer what is meant by those statutes. They can also override court decisions that depend on the absence of statutory law on a given subject, or on common law, or on rules of court falling within the constitutional competence of the legislatures to alter (this depends on how the constitution in question reads or is interpreted to read).
However, under prevailing views of the separation of powers, legislatures cannot override court decisions construing a constitution, except by initiating a constitutional amendment. This lesson was recently taught Congress in City of Boerne v. Flores, No. 95-2074 (U.S. June 25, 1997), where the Supreme Court declared that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was unconstitutional because it represented an attempt by Congress to say what the First Amendment means rather than simply to enforce it through Congress's Fourteenth Amendment enforcement power. It's the Supreme Court's job to say what the First Amendment means.
Interesting that the Hawaii bill's language denounces the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, in which the Supreme Court announced its exclusive right to say what the Constitution means. Talk about reactionary legislation! In any event, the Supreme Court expressly reaffirmed Marbury v. Madison and the separation of powers (as if that were really necessary to do) in City of Boerne.
Legislatures can override court decisions pertaining to statutory interpretation. However, that isn't what theHawaii bill seeks to do. It seeks to institute legislative overrides of courts' constitutional interpretations.