Bush Nominee is Likely to Have Immediate Impact

If you want to have an idea as to the effect that John Roberts would have in the Supreme Court, check out this article from the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON -- If confirmed by the Senate, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee could have a decisive impact this fall on cases involving abortion, assisted suicide, the death penalty and the government's pursuit of the war on terror, judging from the schedule of upcoming cases published by the court Thursday.

The court has been closely split on those issues in the past, and the cases illustrate how a more conservative replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor could tip the balance to the right -- and right from the start.

Judge John G. Roberts Jr., if confirmed, would face such a test in his first week on the court. On Oct. 5, justices will hear the Bush administration's challenge to the nation's only "right to die" law.

Voters in Oregon have twice approved a state measure that allows terminally ill persons to obtain from their doctor medication that will end their lives. But soon after taking office in 2001, Bush's then-Attorney General John Ashcroft declared that doctors who give lethal medication to dying Oregonians will lose their licenses to prescribe medicine.

Oregon's governor and several doctors sued to stop Ashcroft, and they relied on a state's rights argument. They said the regulation of medicine is traditionally left to the states. A federal judge in Oregon and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and ruled Ashcroft had overstepped his bounds.

Justice O'Connor had been a steady defender of state's rights, and the Oregon case has parallels to last month's medical marijuana Supreme Court case. Even though she would not have voted to legalize medical marijuana, California voters did so, and the court should uphold this decision, she said in dissent. In the Oregon case, anti-abortion activists have filed briefs siding with the Bush administration and arguing that assisted-suicide is a crime, even if the people of Oregon think otherwise. The case could signal whether Roberts would support state's rights, the traditional conservative position, or vote to impose federal drug policy on Oregon.

This is only one example. There are two abortion cases coming up to the court, a question on whether the Pentagon has a right to send military recruiters to colleges, a question on whether President Bush has the power to capture and hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely without the right to trial. There is a question of the death penalty and whether new DNA evidence can raise new doubts about an old conviction, and a question of whether federal civil rights laws for disabled persons can be enforced against states, public colleges, and prisons. If Roberts is confirmed, he could reverse many of the swing-vote decisions that Sandra Day O'Conner has made in the past on these issues.