Roberts Court May Be Defined in Second Term
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: October 2, 2006
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — If Year 1 was the transition for the new Roberts court, Year 2 is likely to be the test.
During the first term under the leadership of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the justices were able to find common ground with some regularity by agreeing not to decide much. By the time the term ended in late June, the extent to which the members of the newly configured court were prepared to confront either precedent or one another remained unclear.
Chances are high that the new term, which begins on Monday, will be different. The cases that the court has agreed to decide — 38 so far — offer few off-ramps, requiring instead that the justices proceed to rulings that will define the new court in both substance and style.
Less than six weeks from now, for example, the court will hear the Bush administration’s defense of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. While there are some secondary issues, there is no escaping the fact that at the end of the day, the Supreme Court will have to declare whether the federal statute is constitutional. In doing so, it will have to grapple with the meaning of a 5-to-4 decision that struck down a similar state law six years ago. The administration will argue that if the federal statute cannot coexist with that precedent, the court should overrule the earlier case.
Two cases on whether public school systems can take race into account in maintaining balance in individual schools do not confront the court’s precedents quite as directly. But coming only three years after a sharply divided court permitted the continued use of race in university admissions, the decisions in these cases will provide the first clear indication of where the center now lies on questions of race and public policy after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Justice O’Connor held the balance of power on such questions for years, and wrote the opinion three years ago in the case from the University of Michigan Law School.
The business community is watching several cases closely, particularly an appeal of a $79.5 million award of punitive damages against the cigarette maker Philip Morris, upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court on behalf of the family of a smoker who died of lung cancer.
Of all the areas of Supreme Court doctrine most likely to be affected by the court’s change in membership, punitive damages ranks high on the list. It is also something of a wild card, because the question of whether the constitutional guarantee of due process places any substantive limits on the award of punitive damages by state courts has divided the court in a way that follows no ideological pattern, and the inclinations of the new justices are unknown.
The consistent dissenters from the court’s effort to curb punitive damages have been Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor were in the majority in seeking to limit punitive damages. If their successors, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., agree with the dissenters, the court’s shift could be abruptly and bitterly disappointing to those encouraged by the court’s halting but increasingly assertive steps in setting boundaries on punitive damages.
The new chief justice has made some notable administrative choices since the last term ended. As his administrative assistant, he hired Jeffrey P. Minear, a senior lawyer in the office of the solicitor general and a longtime familiar figure at the court.
The title of administrative assistant understates the role its holder plays in the day-to-day management of the court. Previous administrative assistants have come from a variety of backgrounds; Chief Justice Rehnquist’s last assistant, Sally M. Rider, had held several top-level positions as a government lawyer. But none has ever been the chief justice’s professional peer, as Mr. Minear clearly is. His 56 Supreme Court arguments, in fact, surpass Chief Justice Roberts’s 39. Both men are the same age, 51.
In another development, the court has revised its practice of waiting two or three weeks to post argument transcripts on its Web site. Beginning on Tuesday (in observance of Yom Kippur, the court has scheduled no arguments on Monday), the court will post transcripts on the day of argument at http://www.supremecourtus/ .gov. While the court continues to resist television coverage of its sessions, the change is a step toward public access that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
These are some of the leading issues for the new term:
Abortion Rights
Two federal appeals courts, in St. Louis and San Francisco, declared the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003 unconstitutional, basing their rulings on the Supreme Court’s decision in Stenberg v. Carhart, which struck down Nebraska’s similar law six years ago. The new cases, Gonzales v. Carhart, No. 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, No. 05-1382, are the Bush administration’s appeals of those rulings.
The statute outlaws a surgical procedure that doctors use to perform abortions after about 12 weeks of pregnancy. In its decision six years ago, the Supreme Court held by a vote of 5 to 4 that the law had to take into account medical judgments that the procedure was sometimes necessary for a pregnant woman’s health.
Congress responded by enacting a federal law without a health exception, declaring that the procedure was never necessary to protect a pregnant woman’s health. Among other issues, the new cases therefore present the issue of the respective roles of Congress and the court in defining the scope of constitutional rights, an issue on which Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a dissenter in the case six years ago, has been particularly protective of the court’s role.
Racial Quotas in Schools
Federal appeals courts upheld student assignment plans in Louisville, Ky. (Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, No. 05-915) and Seattle (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, No. 05-908). Both cities have long struggled to achieve integration, and now seek to maintain it by taking race into account in limiting students’ choices of which schools to attend.
While many justices are wary of “this divvying us up by race,” as Chief Justice Roberts phrased it in a voting rights case last term, the same justices also tend to support local education policies. The National School Boards Association is filing a brief supporting the school systems, while the Bush administration is arguing that the assignment plans are unconstitutional.
Punitive Damages Limits
The court has laid down various markers for curbing the discretion of state court systems to award punitive damages. In Philip Morris USA v. William, No. 05-1296, the Oregon Supreme Court upheld the $79.5 million award, nearly 100 times the compensatory damages a jury had awarded the smoker’s widow.
This is far greater than the 10-to-1 ratio that the court’s most recent decision, State Farm v. Campbell in 2003, suggested as the outer limit of due process. On the other hand, earlier cases concerned economic rather than physical injuries. The court’s new membership aside, this case is sufficiently distinctive in several ways so as to make the outcome unpredictable.
Air Pollution Regulation
Two cases present interpretive issues under the Clean Air Act. In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 05-1120, 16 states and other parties are challenging the Bush administration’s view that Congress has not authorized federal regulation of motor vehicle emissions that contribute to global warming. The question in Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corporation, No. 05-848, is what the law requires of utility companies seeking to modernize aging power plants.
Published: October 2, 2006
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — If Year 1 was the transition for the new Roberts court, Year 2 is likely to be the test.
During the first term under the leadership of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the justices were able to find common ground with some regularity by agreeing not to decide much. By the time the term ended in late June, the extent to which the members of the newly configured court were prepared to confront either precedent or one another remained unclear.
Chances are high that the new term, which begins on Monday, will be different. The cases that the court has agreed to decide — 38 so far — offer few off-ramps, requiring instead that the justices proceed to rulings that will define the new court in both substance and style.
Less than six weeks from now, for example, the court will hear the Bush administration’s defense of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. While there are some secondary issues, there is no escaping the fact that at the end of the day, the Supreme Court will have to declare whether the federal statute is constitutional. In doing so, it will have to grapple with the meaning of a 5-to-4 decision that struck down a similar state law six years ago. The administration will argue that if the federal statute cannot coexist with that precedent, the court should overrule the earlier case.
Two cases on whether public school systems can take race into account in maintaining balance in individual schools do not confront the court’s precedents quite as directly. But coming only three years after a sharply divided court permitted the continued use of race in university admissions, the decisions in these cases will provide the first clear indication of where the center now lies on questions of race and public policy after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Justice O’Connor held the balance of power on such questions for years, and wrote the opinion three years ago in the case from the University of Michigan Law School.
The business community is watching several cases closely, particularly an appeal of a $79.5 million award of punitive damages against the cigarette maker Philip Morris, upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court on behalf of the family of a smoker who died of lung cancer.
Of all the areas of Supreme Court doctrine most likely to be affected by the court’s change in membership, punitive damages ranks high on the list. It is also something of a wild card, because the question of whether the constitutional guarantee of due process places any substantive limits on the award of punitive damages by state courts has divided the court in a way that follows no ideological pattern, and the inclinations of the new justices are unknown.
The consistent dissenters from the court’s effort to curb punitive damages have been Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor were in the majority in seeking to limit punitive damages. If their successors, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., agree with the dissenters, the court’s shift could be abruptly and bitterly disappointing to those encouraged by the court’s halting but increasingly assertive steps in setting boundaries on punitive damages.
The new chief justice has made some notable administrative choices since the last term ended. As his administrative assistant, he hired Jeffrey P. Minear, a senior lawyer in the office of the solicitor general and a longtime familiar figure at the court.
The title of administrative assistant understates the role its holder plays in the day-to-day management of the court. Previous administrative assistants have come from a variety of backgrounds; Chief Justice Rehnquist’s last assistant, Sally M. Rider, had held several top-level positions as a government lawyer. But none has ever been the chief justice’s professional peer, as Mr. Minear clearly is. His 56 Supreme Court arguments, in fact, surpass Chief Justice Roberts’s 39. Both men are the same age, 51.
In another development, the court has revised its practice of waiting two or three weeks to post argument transcripts on its Web site. Beginning on Tuesday (in observance of Yom Kippur, the court has scheduled no arguments on Monday), the court will post transcripts on the day of argument at http://www.supremecourtus/ .gov. While the court continues to resist television coverage of its sessions, the change is a step toward public access that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
These are some of the leading issues for the new term:
Abortion Rights
Two federal appeals courts, in St. Louis and San Francisco, declared the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003 unconstitutional, basing their rulings on the Supreme Court’s decision in Stenberg v. Carhart, which struck down Nebraska’s similar law six years ago. The new cases, Gonzales v. Carhart, No. 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, No. 05-1382, are the Bush administration’s appeals of those rulings.
The statute outlaws a surgical procedure that doctors use to perform abortions after about 12 weeks of pregnancy. In its decision six years ago, the Supreme Court held by a vote of 5 to 4 that the law had to take into account medical judgments that the procedure was sometimes necessary for a pregnant woman’s health.
Congress responded by enacting a federal law without a health exception, declaring that the procedure was never necessary to protect a pregnant woman’s health. Among other issues, the new cases therefore present the issue of the respective roles of Congress and the court in defining the scope of constitutional rights, an issue on which Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a dissenter in the case six years ago, has been particularly protective of the court’s role.
Racial Quotas in Schools
Federal appeals courts upheld student assignment plans in Louisville, Ky. (Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, No. 05-915) and Seattle (Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, No. 05-908). Both cities have long struggled to achieve integration, and now seek to maintain it by taking race into account in limiting students’ choices of which schools to attend.
While many justices are wary of “this divvying us up by race,” as Chief Justice Roberts phrased it in a voting rights case last term, the same justices also tend to support local education policies. The National School Boards Association is filing a brief supporting the school systems, while the Bush administration is arguing that the assignment plans are unconstitutional.
Punitive Damages Limits
The court has laid down various markers for curbing the discretion of state court systems to award punitive damages. In Philip Morris USA v. William, No. 05-1296, the Oregon Supreme Court upheld the $79.5 million award, nearly 100 times the compensatory damages a jury had awarded the smoker’s widow.
This is far greater than the 10-to-1 ratio that the court’s most recent decision, State Farm v. Campbell in 2003, suggested as the outer limit of due process. On the other hand, earlier cases concerned economic rather than physical injuries. The court’s new membership aside, this case is sufficiently distinctive in several ways so as to make the outcome unpredictable.
Air Pollution Regulation
Two cases present interpretive issues under the Clean Air Act. In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 05-1120, 16 states and other parties are challenging the Bush administration’s view that Congress has not authorized federal regulation of motor vehicle emissions that contribute to global warming. The question in Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corporation, No. 05-848, is what the law requires of utility companies seeking to modernize aging power plants.
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