But for Cameron, they have boiled down to damaging questions about trust, leadership and personal competence.
Investigative accounts from Nelson George's "Where Did Our Love Go?" to Fredric Dannen's "Hit Men" have raised damaging questions about the company's business practices.
As the scandal widens over Father Karadima's actions, it has raised damaging questions about why the Chilean church hid the allegations for so long.
Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the security commander in Tripoli, told the Guardian he was considering suing over the episode, which raises further damaging questions over Britain's knowledge of the rendition and ill-treatment of prisoners.
Confronted by damaging questions about the source of his campaign donations, John C. Liu, the New York City comptroller, said Wednesday that he would conduct an internal review of his donations but defended the conduct of his campaign.
Beyond raising the prospect of a 4-4 tin in the specific case, Justice Alito's recusal may have enhanced a sense of uncertainty at the court over how to approach the punitive damages question.
The United States Supreme Court has been deeply split on the punitive damages question, with three justices, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, rejecting the idea that the Constitution's guarantee of due process places a limit on what states can permit juries to award.
The best way forward is for Congress to sidestep the damages question and instead add five amendments to existing statutes that would improve the processing of patents, reduce lawsuits and speed up the arrival of innovations on the market.
But if the damages question was not contentious enough, beyond it lay a deeper issue, discussed only obliquely but clearly on the minds of the justices and the lawyers -- whether Congress had authority to apply the disabilities act to the states in the first place.
