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Supreme Court in transition: Chief Roberts and his tribe
By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

Analysis
The first session of the U.S. Supreme Court with Chief Justice John Roberts at its helm was an interesting one. The court had been static for 11 years, the second-longest period in history, and all the media’s talk was about the impending conservative swing.

But the biggest change was Justice Anthony Kennedy’s emergence as the new crucial swing vote. Kennedy’s more visible role this session prompted many in the media to name the new era “the Kennedy court.”

Regarding “how the law of the land has been changed by the Roberts court,” the Los Angeles Times said, “so far, not very much,” and that “the seismic shift dreaded by liberals and dreamed of by conservatives hasn’t occurred.”

During his nomination hearings, Roberts expressed an interest in expanding the court’s caseload, which has dwindled recently, leaving many petitioners frustrated. To get an idea of how many cases make it to the Supreme Court, this time around it decided only 72 cases, a low number compared to past sessions.

Roberts has also declared his desire to unite the court as much as possible; this session the court’s members agreed unanimously more than half the time. But as Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times pointed out, “in the court’s most significant non-unanimous cases, Chief Justice Roberts was in dissent almost as often as he was in the majority.” This is an indication, Greenhouse said, of how it might be Roberts’ court, but he is not in control.

Though it might not have made any noticeable difference, one indication of the court’s possible swing is that, according to The New York Times, the two new members, Roberts and Alito, agreed with each other more than any other pair of justices: 91 percent of the time in non-unanimous cases.

But the two also defined themselves differently from the court’s doctrinaire conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. In two crucial cases Roberts and Alito distanced themselves from the pair’s assertions that any limits on campaign finance were unconstitutional, or that political gerrymandering never requires court intervention.

Below is a look at some of the more high-profile cases that came before the court.

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
In a 5-3 decision that was the court’s most significant and most watched, the court declared the U.S. military could not proceed with its tribunal against a Guantanamo prisoner because it ran contrary to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. The ruling was a blow to the Bush Administration’s approach to the war on terrorism, and the majority opinion specifically addressed Bush’s assertion that he can wage war any way he sees fit. The court said Congress must enact laws that clearly define the government’s approach to terrorism. A week after the ruling, David S. Broder wrote in The Washington Post, “Once again the chief executive had to be reminded that he is not above the law. No more than the security threats Nixon invented to justify his rogue police state operations will the war on terrorism relieve the president of the burden imposed by the Constitution to ‘faithfully execute the laws.’ He can’t just make them up to suit his convenience.”

League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry.
Though the court upheld, 7-2, that redistricting in Texas was not on the whole unconstitutional, it did declare that one of the reapportioned districts was in violation of the Voting Rights Act because it didn’t allow Latinos fair representation. The court also affirmed that state legislatures can redefine voting districts as much as they want to, paving the way for future partisan bickering that might leave some voters voiceless; though the issue is sure to come before the court again. Another point the justices were clear on was that courts in general should not be in the business of drawing up voting districts. “Gerrymandering is not pretty,” The Washington Times said, “but whereas Democrats sought to gain a shortsighted partisan victory, the court wisely chose to let the system be.”

Randall v. Sorrell.
Voting 6-3 to not “repeal the First Amendment,” as the Wall Street Journal put it, the court declared that Vermont’s limits on campaign financing and expenditures were unconstitutional because they limited free speech. This ruling makes it difficult for any real campaign finance reform to be enacted without fundametally altering the Bill of Rights. As the Journal pointed out, “by rejecting Vermont’s draconian restrictions, a Court majority has at least conceded that some campaign-finance limits go too far in damaging free-speech interests. Limits on campaign spending in particular — as opposed to campaign donations — are increasingly suspect.” On the other hand, if the spending of currency qualifies as speech, it seems that, language barriers aside, some of us will inevitably have a louder voice than others.

Hudson v. Michigan.
In a 5-4 decision, the court stated that just because police fail to “knock and announce” during a search of a suspect’s home doesn’t mean collected evidence is inadmissible in court. The decision seemingly undermines already established citizen rights under the Fourth Amendment. “For those who worry that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will take the court in a radically conservative direction,” The New York Times said about the ruling, “it is sobering how easily the majority tossed aside a principle that traces back to 13th-century Britain, and a legal doctrine that dates to 1914, to let the government invade people’s homes.”

Lockhart v. United States.
In a pertinent ruling for student loan recipients, the court unanimously ruled the federal government had the right to take 15 percent of 65-year-old James Lockhart’s Social Security check because he had racked up more than $80,000 in student loan debt which he had owed to the federal government for more than 10 years. Lockhart, who represented himself, was unemployed and took out the loans in order to attend school. Unfortunately, he was never able to get steady work to pay off the loans. The court’s ruling should remind students that if you take out loans you should pay them back. It should also remind students to never represent themselves in front of the Supreme Court.

The court has many controversial cases planned for the next session, which begins in October, and will rule on several tough issues including partial-birth abortion, immigration, anti-trust laws, the Telecommunications Act, racial discrimination in school districts, prison conditions, sexual discrimination and the Clean Air Act.