by James Oliphant

A new poll suggests the U.S. Supreme Court stands squarely in the middle of the electorate, meaning nobody is happy with it.

All right, that's a bit of an overstatement. But a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University say 43 percent of Americans disapprove of the court's performance--the most in five years--and 42 percent say it's moving in the wrong direction.

But what direction do they want? There's the rub.

While 31 percent of those surveyed complain the court is too right-tilting, another 25 percent say it's too liberal. Thirty-three percent gave the Goldilocks answer, saying the court is "about right."

And 39 percent approve of the job the court is doing.

Perhaps most significant in an election year, 87 percent of those polled said the president's power to select Supreme Court justices is "very important" or "somewhat important" to them as they vote. The new president could end up replacing one or even two seats on the nine-member court.

As Joe Jackson sang: "You can't get what you want, 'till you know what you want."

by James Oliphant

Here, on the weekend that we celebrate the successful armed rebellion by America's founders, is the thought question of the day.

For years, anti-gun activists and others have whispered that the National Rifle Association, the most powerful gun lobby in the nation and one of the most powerful Washington lobbies on any issue, has really never wanted the Supreme Court to define the Second Amendment.

Why? Well, the theory went that a ruling such as the one the court handed down last week in District of Columbia v. Heller could dent the group where it hurts the most: fundraising.

After all, the NRA became the powerhouse that it is today largely because of the basic proposition it offered the American voter: The government wants to take your guns away.

by James Oliphant

One point of contention that arose during the annual review of the Supreme Court term conducted by the Federalist Society Tuesday is whether the general public follows the court and in fact considers its makeup when voting for president.

"There are 100 million voters out there and they don't care," said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who frequently argues before the high court.

The court is never more in the news than at the end of its term, when it often releases its most high-profile and contentious decisions. That happened again this year, as the court in the last two weeks ruled Guantanamo detainees have habeas corpus rights to challenge their detentions in court, that Americans have a constitutional right to own a gun and that states can't extend the death penalty to child rapists.

All three decisions had legal commentators commenting furiously, had scholars debating, and had the presidential candidates bashing the court--or each other.

By James Oliphant

With his third term as chief justice coming to a close amid three explosive cases last week, John Roberts has proved to be almost everything conservatives hoped and liberals feared.

Despite pledges during his 2005 confirmation hearing to hew to judicial centrism, Roberts has shown himself to be a reliable member of the Supreme Court's right flank--rarely, if ever, disagreeing with its positions on civil rights, gun control, the death penalty, affirmative action and a host of other issues.

That may come as no surprise to those who paid close attention to Roberts' career before his elevation to the high court, but the picture is at odds with the non-ideological face he presented after his nomination.

"I come before this committee with no agenda, no platform," Roberts told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2005. "I will approach every case with an open mind."

Roberts branded himself then a judicial "umpire" who called the balls and strikes as he saw them, without reference to ideology. He was confirmed by a wide margin, 78-22, with half of the Senate's democrats supporting him.

"Some people will like what Roberts has done and some people will be upset about it, but it is hard to describe it as the work of a 'neutral umpire,' " said Christopher Eisgruber, a professor at Princeton University and an expert on the court appointments process.

by James Oliphant

Reaction in Chicago was fast and mostly furious among city officials to Thursday's Supreme Court decision that found a constitutional right to gun ownership and struck down Washington D.C.'s ban on handguns.

While Mayor Richard M. Daley (who said "the world is laughing at us") and others grapple with how to defend the city's handgun ban from the oncoming legal onslaught, the members of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board had a more radical idea.

In an editorial in Friday's editions, it called for a repeal of the Second Amendment:

by Matthew Hay Brown

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty expressed disappointment with the Supreme Court decision today to overturn the three-decade-old District of Columbia handgun ban, but said officials would move quickly to comply with the ruling.

"I have already directed the Metropolitan Police Department to implement an orderly process for allowing citizens to register handguns for lawful possession in their homes," Fenty told reporters this afternoon.

He went on to stress that the ruling would be limited in its impact on district statutes.

"This case is about a very narrow issue, and that is about the legal possession of handguns in the homes," he said. "It leaves intact various other laws that apply to private citizens who would purchase handguns or other firearms for home possession."

All firearms still must be registered with the police, Fenty said. Automatic and semi-automatic handguns generally remain illegal and no handguns can be carried outside of the home.

The mayor appeared with district Police Chief Cathy Lanier and Attorney General Peter Nickles.

"Now, let me be very clear," Nickles said. "You cannot go out today, if you have a handgun, and carry it around. This is not open season with handguns."

by Matthew Hay Brown, updated with comments from Pelosi and Shea-Porter

Congressional Republicans have wasted little time in trying to turn today's Supreme Court decision to overturn the District of Columbia handgun ban into a campaign issue.

With the ink on the ruling not yet dry, the National Republican Congressional Committee has issued a series of releases targeting vulnerable Democrats who had signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the ban.

A sample, circulated by the NRCC, takes aim at Democratic Rep. Carole Shea-Porter of New Hampshire:

"WASHINGTON - Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) found herself on the losing end of the Supreme Court's ruling today, as her liberal opposition to Second Amendment rights was defeated. In an historic ruling, the Supreme Court overturned a ban on handguns and on self-defense in the home, in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller.

Opponents of the now overturned law had said it prevents residents from defending themselves. ...

"Shea-Porter also puts herself at odds with dozens of her fellow Democrats who signed onto the amicus brief that expressed support for the overturning of the gun ban.

" 'Shea-Porter's opposition to the Second Amendment puts her at odds with not only members of her own party, but the overwhelming majority her New Hampshire constituents,' said NRCC spokesman Ken Spain.

By James Oliphant

The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday furtively embraced an interpretation of the Second Amendment long advocated by gun-rights supporters, finding for the first time in tghe nation's history that the Constitution guarantees an individudal the right to own a handgun.

The court, in combustible 5-4 ruling, struck down Washington, D.C.'s total ban on handgun ownership. The decision greatly endangers, but not immediately affects, Chicago's similar gun ban.

The landmark decision was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, who, in describing the opinion in open court Wednesday, said the Second Amendment should be read expansively and that it "means pretty much what it means today, to have and carry weapons."

Scalia said people will "not be deprived of the right to keep and bear arms."

The ruling of the court however was, as was expected, narrow in scope, applying only to the specific aspects of Washington's law, which prohibits the ownership of handguns and their registration. The D.C. act also requires that shotguns in the home be disassembled or trigger-locked.

And like other individual rights, Scalia wrote, the right to own a gun is subject to reasonable regulation, including laws preventing felons and the mentally ill from owning guns and those forbidding guns in schools and government buildings. He also suggested that certain types of dangerous or unusual guns could be banned.

The opinion also appears to leave concealed carry laws intact.

He was joined in the opinion by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Justice John Paul Stevens summarized his dissent from the bench, blasting the majority for establishing what he called a "newly discovered" right and accusing the conservative bloc of not staying true to the principles of judicial restraint they frequently espouse.

The court, Stevens said, "is making new law today."

Both Stevens and Justice Stephen Breyer filed dissents in the case. They were joined by Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The decision is 154 pages long and can be viewed here.

The Swamp will have more on this landmark ruling throughout the day.

By James Oliphant

The Supreme Court Wednesday chopped a titanic punitive damage award leveled at Exxon Mobil Corp. over the calamitous 1989 tanker accident and oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

The court reduced the award from $2.5 billion to $507.5 million, saying that punitive damage awards, even for disasters on the scale of the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, need to reasonably predictable for corporate actors and others and that too massive an award is unfair.

The decision, written by Justice David Souter, held that punitive damages should be awarded in an even ratio to compensatory damages in a given case. In the Exxon case, a jury awarded $507.5 million in compensatory damages to 33,000 fishermen and others who suffered severe economic harm when the Valdez ran aground and dumped millions of gallons of crude oil into the sound.

The court used that figure as a bases for reducing the $2.5 billion award. Souter cautioned that the court was acting as a maritime court in issuing its ruling, which would limit the breadth of its decision.

The Valdez was captained by the now infamous Joseph Hazelwood, who, Souter said, "left the helm at a critical moment." Hazelwood had been drinking. The Exxon supertanker then smashed into a reef.

A trial, a jury originally socked Exxon with punitives of $5 billion, but that number was cleaved in half by a federal appeals court.

At oral arguments in the case, Exxon had pleaded for relief, saying that it spent some $2.1 billion in clean up efforts, paid $900 million in fines to the United States and Alaska and another $303 million in payments to private parties.

Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer filed dissents saying they would have upheld the appeals court award of $2.5 billion.

Thursday will be the final day of the court's 2007-2008 term and the justices are saving perhaps the most dramatic opinion for last: the ruling on whether the District of Columbia's ban on guns violates the Second Amendment of the Constitution. That decision will be handed down shortly after 10 a.m., Eastern Time, Thursday.

By James Oliphant

A divided Supreme Court Wednesday slammed the door on expanding the death penalty to cover violent crimes that do not result in the death of the victim, overturning a Louisiana law that permitted capital punishment for child rapists.

In the 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court held that the law violated the Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Allowing the execution of child rapists, Kennedy wrote, runs counter to "evolving standards of decency in a maturing society."

Kennedy said that the court and society has an interest in limiting the application of the death penalty, and noted that 44 states currently prohibit the execution of defendants who are convicted of crimes where a death did not occur.

The case involved Patrick Kennedy, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1998 rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter. The girl was badly injured in the assault and required surgery.

Kennedy has insisted he is innocent. His lawyers have also argued that he is borderline mentally challenged.

The court's decision is in line with its decisions earlier this decade outlawing the execution of the mentally retarded and defendants who were juveniles when the capital offense was committed. Kennedy was the key figure in those cases as well.

Justice Samuel Alito filed a dissent in the case, joined by the other members of the conservative wing of the court, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and John Roberts. The dissent pointed a small, but growing minority of states that have sought to broaden the death penalty to cover child rape.

"The harm that is caused to the victims and to society at large by the worst child rapists is grave," Alito wrote. "It is the judgment of the Louisiana lawmakers and those in an increasing number of other States that these harms justify the death penalty."

By David G. Savage

Weighing the balance between military readiness and environmental protection, the Supreme Court said Monday that it would decide whether the U.S. Navy must limit its use of high-powered sonar off the California coast to protect whales and other marine mammals.

The justices voted to hear the Navy's appeal of a judge's order that requires ships to turn down their sonar whenever whales or dolphins are spotted within 2,200 yards -- 1.25 miles. A modified version of the judge's order will remain in effect during the appeal, but the high court's decision to hear the case is a victory for the Navy and a setback for environmentalists.

Environmentalists point to studies of dead whales that washed ashore in the Bahamas, Canary Islands and Madeira islands after the Navy conducted war games nearby. Some of the animals appeared to have died of hemorrhages in and around their ears, brains and lungs. They also said the Navy's own studies forecast that training exercises off the California coast would "significantly disturb" an estimated 170,000 marine mammals.

But the Navy said training exercises using sonar have been conducted for 40 years off California, and they "produced no evidence of sonar-related harm to any marine mammal." Of special note, there are no reports of dead whales after these exercises, they said.

Read the full story in the Los Angeles Times.

by James Oliphant

The Supreme Court's flair for the dramatic is intact.

Monday marked the last scheduled day of the term and it came and went without any of the remaining high-profile cases being handed down.

The court has already announced it will release opinions on Wednesday and possibly Thursday or Friday.

What's left? Start with the eagerly anticipated decision on Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban, the first time in almost 70 years the justices have grappled with the meaning of the Second Amendment.

Thomas Goldstein, a Supreme Court advocate who runs a must-read blog for court-watchers called ScotusBlog, plays a bit of a parlor game in trying to figure out which justice is writing which decision. By his reckoning, which you can read here, Justice Antonin Scalia is likely writing the controlling opinion in the D.C. gun case.

That, of course, is bad news for those who who favor strong gun control restrictions. Scalia is likely to take a more absolutist stance on the Second Amendment than say a more moderate justice such as Anthony Kennedy or even Samuel Alito. Which means if Scalia is writing the opinion, you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that the gun-ban will be overturned.

But on what grounds? And how sweeping will the ruling be? It's entirely possible, for instance, that Scalia may only be writing a plurality opinion and not a majority one. The difference? Justices concur and dissent from sections of opinions. And it's possible there are a majority of votes on the court to overturn the ban, but the reasons for doing so could differ, perhaps wildly. And a plurality opinion carries less weight than a clear, declarative opinion from a majority of the court.

Still, it is the law. And an opinion from Scalia will certainly contain enough Second Amendment jurisprudence to send shockwaves throughout both the gun-rights and gun-control communities, not to mention, perhaps, the presidential campaigns.

We may know as early as Wednesday morning the answer to these questions. Then again, given the court's sense of the dramatic, perhaps not.

by James Oliphant

The Supreme Court Monday upheld a federal law cited by authorities as an important tool to combat online child pornographers.

In the 7-2 ruling, the court dismissed arguments that the PROTECT Act, passed by Congress in 2003, was too broadly written and could make it a crime to possess or pander images that aren't sexually graphic.

In the opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court acknowledged that the statute also criminalized the pandering of kiddie porn images, not simply the possession of them, meaning that it regulates speech as well as conduct, saying:

Rather than targeting the underlying material, this statute bans the collateral speech that introduces such material into the child-pornography distribution network. Thus, an Internet user who solicits child pornography from an undercover agent violates the statute, even if the officer possesses no child pornography. Likewise, a person who advertises virtual child pornography as depicting actual children also falls within the reach of the statute.

But Scalia said the category of speech the statute addresses is fair game for regulation, writing "that offers to give or receive what it is unlawful to possess have no social value and thus, like obscenity, enjoy no First Amendment protection."

He also rejected an argument that persuaded the federal appeals court in Atlanta to overturn the statute--that the law makes it a crime to simply boast or brag about possessing images that someone else could believe to be child porn without that actually being true.

by James Oliphant

Staying on the course he set last month with the opinion he wrote in the Supreme Court's lethal injection case, Justice John Paul Stevens suggested in a speech this weekend that racehorses are put to death in more humane way than prisoners.

Speaking to a group of lawyers and judges Friday in Chattanooga, Tenn., Stevens received a round of applause when he brought up the euthanasia of Kentucky Derby entrant Eight Bells.

"I had checked the procedure they used to kill the horse," Stevens said, expressing surprise to learn it is against the law in Kentucky to kill animals using one of the drugs in a three-drug lethal injection cocktail that many believe is cruel to humans.

Kentucky's method for executing prisoners was the subject of a legal challenge in the Supreme Court. Last month, in a 6-3 decision, the court held the three-drug protocol did not cause cruel and unusual punishment to prisoners and was constitutional.

Stevens sided with the majority, but wrote a separate opinion in which, for the first time, he declared his opposition to capital punishment, saying the law in the area had become a hopeless muddle.

In Kentucky, a separate, one-drug procedure is used for horses.In Kentucky, a separate, one-drug procedure is used for horses. Critics of the three-drug protocol says that when done incorrectly, it can cause great pain in the prisoner, while a paralyzing agent would prevent him from crying out.

Mildred and Richard Loving, January 26, 1965. (AP Photo)

by Frank James

On this day when people in Indiana and North Carolina are choosing between the Democratic candidates for president, one of whom is the offspring of an interracial union, it's mind-boggling to think that just over 40 years ago, marriages like that which produced Sen. Barack Obama were illegal in many states, including North Carolina where voters are going to the polls.

But all that was changed in 1967 because of two quiet and courageous people who fought for their love by fighting an unjust law, Richard and Mildred Loving of Virginia. Their desire to have their marriage recognized in the eyes of the law in native state led them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws in the nation.

Mildred Jeter Loving, an African-American, died at 68 last week. Her husband was killed in 1975 by a drunken driver. But she and he will forever have a place in history as the Loving family in ironically perfect legal citation Loving v. Virginia.

A humble woman by all accounts, Loving didn't see herself as a hero akin to Rosa Parks. But she and her husband started something that hasn't ended, for champions of same-sex marriage view the Lovings as a model.