Supreme Court Cases Fall 2013

I wanted to start this thread to keep tags and comments on one of the most important intuitions of the USA, and some of the cases they see.

Please at least listen to the oral arguments before commenting.

Supreme court Oral Arguments

This past two weeks we had two great cases.

The case regarding affirmative action

Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action | The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

And the case regarding campaign limits McCutcheon vs FEC

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission | The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

Please listen to the audio and post hopefully informative opinions.

My two cents.
On the affirmative action case. Poor Sotomayor was the only one grilling the defendants of the Law banning the use of alternative action. But you can see that it was a losing battle as it is hard to justify the passing of an amendment that basically prohibits using race as a factor, under the ground of been racial discrimination. Somehow it was bizarro world for me. "In order to have this law struck down under equal protections, we have to establish that the law in fact does not grant equal protection, but protected status, to race." this case seems so clear to me it may be decided on an avalanche in favor of the ban.

McCutcheon. The court is now caught on the position of separating two types of political speech, and the impact money has on politics. From citizens united, the outcome was that independent political speech (money) can not be stopped based on 1st amendment rights, since it does not create the appearance of corruption. Now they are facing when they have to deal with the appearance of corruption since it involves direct contributions to candidates and parties. I will be very disappointed if the limits are eliminated, since it basically opens the floodgate to the appearance of corruption. Or maybe the court will do a 180, and draw the line on the sand and upholds the limits, basically saying money that goes to the political system, can be capped, due to corruption. Or they may reverse citizens united and say money spend is not political speech, highly doubtful.

One of the most fascinating parts of the supreme court process is the bickering and jabs that the supreme court throw at each other. If you don't listen to the arguments of the case you want to talk, then how do you know how it was presented to the judges, how do you know the merits of the case or the hypothetical thrown at the counsels?
For example you can talk all you want about how the ACA is a tax, and since it was held constitutional, then it is a legal tax. Well turns out that they could not comment of he validity of the law itself as a tax, since at the time of arguments, the tax was not in effect, hence no one was affected by it. The court left open the door to come back at it in terms of the ACA been a tax law that did not originated on the house.