Abortion, birth control, race top U.S. Supreme Court's agenda
Politics
Abortion, birth control, race top U.S. Supreme Court’s agenda
Abortion, birth control and race are among the most divisive issues the Supreme Court will confront over the next nine months, amid a presidential election campaign in which some candidates are talking pointedly about the justices and the prospect of replacing some of them in the next few years. The justices are returning to the bench on Monday for the start of their new term and their first public appearance together since a number of high-profile decisions in June that displayed passionate, sometimes barbed, disagreements and suggested some bruised feelings among the nine judges.
This term, I’d expect a return to the norm, in which the right side of the court wins the majority, but by no means all of the cases.
Georgetown University law school’s Irv Gornstein.
Commentators on the left and right say the lineup of cases suggests that conservatives will win more often than they will lose over the next few months, in contrast to the liberal side’s success last term in gay marriage, health care and housing discrimination, among others. The larger question is whether there are majorities for major rulings that, for example, would all but outlaw the use of race in admissions or declare that workers’ free-speech rights preclude unions from collecting any money from nonmembers. Justice Anthony Kennedy, author of the court’s opinion on gay marriage, will probably play a similarly decisive role in the most important cases to be heard by the court.
On issue after issue, Kennedy provides the deciding vote.
Conservative commentator Ed Whelan
