>>> history was made at the supreme court today, at least in part. in its ruling about immigration. what does that ruling tell us about the thinking of the nine justices on other major constitutional principles? and what can we expect thursday when health care will be announced. joining me now to help interpret more of the legalese is tom goldstein , supreme court scholar. tom, your take-away first on today's ruling.
>> i think the administration has to be very happy with the decision in the arizona immigration case. they clearly won with respect to three of the four provisions of the very tough arizona immigration law and it was basically a tie on the fourth. they didn't lose. the supreme court saying that on the ask for your papers provision, they didn't know enough about how the statute would be applied to know whether it was constitutional or not and they would have to wait to decide that question. they made pretty clear that you could ask for immigration papers if you had reasonable cause if you weren't going to hold people for too long just to check their immigration status. so it does uphold that principle which is very important to a lot of conservatives who favor the law that you can ask about the status but beyond that, it was a big win for the obama administration.
>> what do you make about their ruling on campaign finance on the montana case, which involves upholding and reaffirming citizens united ?
>> this is a successor to the supreme court 's 5-4 decision saying that corporations and unions have a constitutional right to spend as much money as they want in television advertising, in elections. the montana supreme court had tried to read that decision very narrowly and the five members of that citizens united majority slapped them down in less than one page, giving them the back of their hand. the other thing that was notable is that the four more liberal members of the supreme court could have forced the court to hear oral argument and receive briefing on that question, but they essentially gave up and said we recognize that this montana decision is going to be reversed, and i think what was going on is they didn't want to have a big decision that would reinforce citizens united . they're saving their powder in the hope of one day overruling it.
>> and then of course, looking forward to health care , there's no way i guess to infer from today's breakdown how the court will divide on this very, very important case, but this now -- you are the expert.
>> i think the only thing you can infer is it's pretty likely that john roberts has principal responsibility, our chief justice, for the opinion.
>> because justice kennedy wrote the immigration opinion?
>> yes, and then john roberts hasn't done anything really in major cases in march and april at the end of the term, which means it's very likely that he assigned that decision to himself. maybe with justice kennedy helping. it was obviously argued in four different parts. but i think we'll see the chief justice taking the lead on the fate of the affordable care act .
>> which may not be good news for the administration.
>> it's really hard to tell. i think we always expected that john roberts would be in the majority in the case, given his leadership role in the court. it doesn't for me at least give me too many tea leaves in terms of whether the administration won or lost. it just does make it an even more anxious moment as we wait three more days for thursday, when we finally know that we'll get the health care decision.
>> tom goldstein , we will talk to you again and thank