Roberts ushers in change

As Chief Justice John Roberts takes the gavel for the first time, and a new appointee faces confirmation on the hill, the U.S. Supreme Court will open its 2005-2006 term amid dockets of flashy, hot-button issues. These cases will surely deal with fundamental controversies of our time; issues of religious freedom, parental notification for abortion, campaign finance reform, assisted suicide, nasty roommates, and Anna Nicole Smith.

Roberts, taking over for William Rehnquist, will be under close scrutiny for how closely he will follow in the late Chief Justice's footsteps, having once clerked for him. Pundits are already speculating as to whether his style will be the same, both literally and figuratively. Experts wonder whether he will be known for deference to colleagues and piercing lines of questioning, or perhaps for his fashion sense, as Rehnquist was after insisting that large gold chevrons be sewn onto his robe.

Confirmed just one week ago, he will have little time to prepare for the deluge of cases before him, many of them issues in the national spotlight. Already this week, justices heard Gonzales v. Oregon, an assisted suicide case. The Bush Administration is arguing that it has the right to punish physicians who participate in assisted suicide, regardless of whether or not they are legal in a state. Not only an issue of life or death, the case deals with states rights; specifically, the ability to license and regulate physicians.

Two cases involving abortion are sure to arise in November-one a challenge to parental notification laws in New Hampshire and another a civil racketeering case.

Jennifer K. Brown, the legal director of the women's advocacy group Legal Momentum, expressed her shock that the court had decided to take the cases.

"It means that at least four justices have agreed that the legal issues are still unsettled . . . It sets off a red flag for us," Brown noted.

Many fear that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's slated replacement, White House counsel Harriet Miers, "may vote to give the states more discretion in this area than O'Connor would have," said Stephen Presser, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern Univeristy.

Not everyone shares his concern however, as many conservatives are disappointed in her nomination. David Myers of the National Review openly labeled her appointment "an unforced error," accusing bush of squandering an opportunity to appoint a conservative scholar.

"I worked with Harriet Miers. She's a lovely person: intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, discreet, dedicated . . . I could pile on the praise all morning. But there is no reason at all to believe either that she is a legal conservative or-and more importantly-that she has the spine and steel necessary to resist the pressures that constantly bend the American legal system toward the left," he worried.

Campaign spending issues are on the docket for early 2006, and are expected to shed light on the relationship of campaign spending and the right to free speech. An anti-abortion group in Wisconsin is challenging a law that bans some ads against candidates in the final weeks of an election. Another case challenges Vermont's state campaign spending limits. The court's decisions will be important to states fighting to curb astronomical campaign spending in their local races.

One case out of Georgia may draw attention on college campuses and young urbanites everywhere, as the court is expected to rule as to whether one roommate can allow the search of another roommate's belongings. Also from Georgia, a case will question whether the Americans with Disabilities Act must apply in state prisons.

Out of New Mexico comes a legal battle stemming from a 1999 incident that pits U.S. customs agents against the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Agents seized 30 gallons of a hallucinogenic tea from a man who claims to have ties to a religious group with origins in the Brazilian Amazon. The government will claim the tea is a controlled substance under their jurisdiction, and the RFRA will be used to defend it as a sacrament, the position taken by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a series of cases out of Texas, the court will first have to decide whether federal agents who pressed for the indictment of a Dallas executive can be sued in retaliation. William Moore, a former CEO, was absolved by a federal judge in 1990, but is the fact that he was indicted enough to keep him from suing? Secondly, the court will rule on whether Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. and other large real estate groups can have business disputes cleared up in federal courts since they are operating in various states.

And finally in another Texas case, picked out of more than 1,900 appeals, the court has agreed to hear the case of the infamous former stripper turned Playboy centerfold. Smith has been embroiled in a probate battle over the fortune of her late husband, 90-year-old oil-tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, since his 1995 death. The controversial star, legal name Vickie Lynn Marshall, stands to gain more than $474 million from his estate if she can shake his son, E. Pierce Marshall, in court.

Smith married the 89-year-old Marshall at the tender age of 26, at which point she claims he promised her millions. E. Pierce Marshall, however, stands by his claim that Smith is not mentioned in the will, and that the $6 million in gifts she received during the marriage should be sufficient.

At issue for the Supreme Court justices, however, is not to pass judgment on the self-proclaimed blonde bombshell's character or her b-list lifestyle, but rather the question of when a federal court is allowed to hear claims that are also involved in state probate proceedings; the case has been held up by jurisdiction issues for years.

Texas court found Smith's original claim to the estate frivolous and a jury determined that Marshall had done nothing wrong. Her initial award of $89 million was eventually thrown out by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, ruling that the Texas probate court's decision that the millionaire's son was the sole heir must stand.