The Supreme Court is currently deciding a challenge to Indiana's voter ID law, brought by the A.C.L.U. and the Democratic Party.
The same divide was apparent in 2010 when the court decided a challenge to restrictions on campaign spending.
In other business-related cases, justices said they would hear an appeal by the former media baron Conrad M. Black, who was seeking to overturn his fraud conviction, and would decide a constitutional challenge to the 2002 law that created a national board to oversee public company auditors.
Scalia raised eyebrows in 2004 by going duck hunting with then-Vice President Dick Cheney shortly after the court agreed to decide a case challenging Cheney's handling of an energy policy task force.
Called upon to decide a major antitrust challenge to organized baseball in 1915, he instead did nothing for a year, effectively destroying the fledgling league that had filed the suit and forcing it to settle.
SURVEILLANCE The justices agreed to decide whether a challenge may proceed to a 2008 federal law that broadened the government's power to monitor international communications.
That court will decide on a challenge to Germany's participation in the euro zone rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism.
The Supreme Court agreed to decide a potentially far-reaching challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty laws in nine states where 800 people are on death row.
The Supreme Court agreed today to decide a potentially far-reaching challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty laws in nine states where judges rather than juries determine whether to sentence a killer to death.
Just when I think she's about to say "an albatross" she decides on "a challenge".
