Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, was one of six Republican congressmen who participated in a telecast of Justice Sunday, broadcast to churches and Christian radio and television stations, to rally evangelicals against "activist judges."

Mr. DeLay, the highest ranking of six Republican congressmen who participated, questioned the Supreme Court's power to strike down federal laws it deemed unconstitutional.

The Constitution assigned Congress the power to make laws and limited the federal courts to applying and interpreting those laws, Mr. DeLay said, but "this fact, understood by every high school civics student, has been forgotten in recent decades by too many members of the American judiciary, including, most notably, the United States Supreme Court itself."

As evidence, he and others cited Supreme Court decisions about abortion, sodomy, obscenity and government support for religion. "That's not judicial independence," Mr. DeLay said. "That's judicial supremacy, judicial autocracy."