U.S. Supreme Court's term not typical - San Francisco Chronicle

The U.S. Supreme Court still has a conservative majority and an overall record of ruling in favor of businesses, police and prosecutors. But the 2011-12 term was mostly a good one for liberals.
Thursday's 5-4 decision by Chief Justice John Roberts upholding most of President Obama's far-reaching health insurance law ended a term that included other rulings celebrated by the court's usual critics.
One required police to get warrants before installing GPS tracking devices. Another entitled criminal defendants to competent legal representation in plea negotiations. A third struck down state laws requiring life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of murder.
Immigration ruling

The court's mixed ruling on Arizona's immigration law last week allowed the state to enforce a law requiring police to check the legal status of people they stop and suspect of being in the country unlawfully.
But the majority, including Roberts, made it clear that the "show me your papers" requirement was subject to future challenges for reasons including a claim of racial profiling. The court overturned three other provisions allowing arrests or state criminal prosecution of suspected illegal immigrants.
Some rulings swung in the other direction, including 5-4 decisions allowing jails to conduct strip searches of all new inmates and barring damage suits against states that deny sick leave to their employees. A five-justice majority also required California public employee unions to get the consent of nonmembers before assessing midyear fees for political purposes, a possible forerunner of future rulings weakening labor's electoral clout.
Year of surprises

But overall, this was not a typical term for the court under Roberts, chief justice since 2005. Best known for its January 2010 ruling that allowed unlimited election spending by corporations - a ruling it tersely reaffirmed last week - the Roberts court has also limited school integration efforts, restricted class actions by employees and consumers, and upheld a federal ban on a type of midterm abortion.
"We're not seeing a rebirth of the (Earl) Warren court," said Erwin Chemerinsky, a liberal scholar and dean of the law school at UC Irvine. "But I can't think of another recent term where so many of the major cases came out in a way that progressives would favor."
Conservative myth?

Conservative scholar John Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University in Orange County, said it's time to retire the myth of a conservative court under Roberts and his predecessor, the late William Rehnquist.
"Look at their refusal to defer to legislators when clearly acting within their powers," Eastman said, citing the recent decision overturning state laws that required life-without-parole sentences for juvenile murderers, and decade-old rulings striking down death sentences for juveniles and criminal penalties for gay sex.
Another conservative commentator, Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, said the 2011-12 term showed that "Republican appointees - no matter how carefully selected - cannot be counted on to consistently uphold conservative principles."
The term was dominated by the health care case, perhaps the most significant government program to reach the court in a half century. For Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, usually the swing voter in close cases, it posed a conflict between two conservative principles: deference to lawmakers' policy decisions, and resistance to government interference in marketplaces, including an unprecedented provision requiring uninsured people to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty.
Kennedy sided with the dissenters and voted to overturn the law. Much of Roberts' majority opinion read like a conservative tract - questioning government power over private citizens' economic decisions, and condemning federal coercion of states to expand their Medicaid programs - but he chose the path of deference, saying the individual insurance mandate could be reasonably understood as a constitutionally authorized tax measure.
Momentous decisions

The ruling produced sighs of relief from the left, cries of betrayal from the right, and speculation on the outlook of a court that faces another set of momentous decisions in the term that starts in October.
The justices have already agreed to reconsider whether race can play any role in public college admissions. It also could take up a section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that allows the Justice Department to veto race-related changes in many states' election laws. This could also be the term for a ruling on same-sex marriage, with cases pending on California's Proposition 8 and the law banning federal marital benefits for same-sex couples.
Social issues

Social issues played a lesser role in the just-completed term. One case involved the federal law that allows state employees to take unpaid medical laves. The court had ruled earlier that an employee who is denied time off to care for a sick relative can sue for damages. But this term, the conservative majority denied damages to a state worker who applied for leave because of his own illness and was turned down.
In another case, the court unanimously allowed a religious school to classify one of its teachers as a minister, stripping her of the protections of discrimination laws that apply to other employees. Eastman said the ruling, based on freedom of religion, might aid Catholic bishops challenging the new health law's contraception coverage.
Criminal defendants won some significant cases, including rulings that required a warrant for GPS tracking, that allowed retroactive application of a new law reducing sentences for crack cocaine, and gave them the right to challenge ineffective legal representation in plea negotiations that are much more common than trials.
A 6-3 majority led by Kennedy invoked freedom of speech Thursday to overturn a federal law that made it a crime to lie about receiving combat medals. The justices sidestepped another free-speech case by declining to rule on the Federal Communications Commission's ban on one-time "fleeting expletives," saying instead that the FCC violated networks' rights by enforcing the ban without adequate advance disclosure.