The Roberts Court will confront pleas to reconsider or overrule a number of key decisions undergirding hot-button issues on the new term’s docket. Will the justices take baby steps or the giant strides the activists prefer as another critical term unfolds? At least six of the court’s precedents are in play, and how the court deals with them may well define the October 2013 term.
The identity of a new Supreme Court takes roughly nine years to emerge, longtime court scholar A.E. Dick Howard of the University of Virginia School of Law has said. Under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., the court begins its ninth year on Oct. 7, and at least in one area of the law, its path seems clear.
