Roberts Court May Be Defined in Second Term

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/washington/02scotus.html?hp&ex=1159761600&en=d657dd6e88a8f1b5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

know they can still be tarred and feathered if their rulings aren't within the Constitution.