Politics and the Supreme Court (New York Times)

The Supreme Court underscored its power to shape American life when it took major cases about the health care reform law, Arizona’s anti-immigrant law and the Voting Rights Act in an election year. Equally, though, these cases demonstrate the ability of politics to shape the court. Each of these three issues is a battle between left and right — according to one New York Times’ columnist, a battle between liberals’ desire to protect minority rights and the conservative need to protect economic rights and minimize big government. Such weighty cases remind us that, not only are the political influences behind each case important, the makeup of the court — and thus, the direction of the law — are likely to be decided by the 2012 election.