Is predicting the votes of potential justices a proper role for either the president or the Senate?
That was a problem, because for a majority of the Justices a simple dislike of gay sex was no longer a plausible rationale.
Indeed, the appeals court in the case gave the justices a legal road map for requiring same-sex marriage in California but not the rest of the nation.
Even so, in the recording, Calheiros said he could "negotiate" with the justices a "transition" from president Dilma Rousseff to vice president Michel Temer.
The Republican petition offered the justices a bit from both categories, including nods to constitutional due process and to a federal statute on absentee voting.
Business groups had declared the election of the incumbent justices a priority, while unions and trial lawyers had begun gathering a war chest for the Democrats.
Besides, the same-sex-marriage decision will give the conservative Justices a distraction from their other big case... 2. The crippling of the Affordable Care Act.
Advocates of the Montana law had hoped that a Supreme Court review would give the justices a chance to revisit Citizens United in light of the torrent of campaign money it helped unleash.
Its decisions during this historic "flood season," as Justice Ginsburg described the end-of-term rush, are likely to make the panel — and the tenure of some of the justices — a significant issue in the presidential campaign.
Even so, the rapidly changing political environment gives the justices a reason — should they want one — to sidestep imposing a national standard and leave the matter to the states.
The court, which heard oral arguments in the Baxter case in September, was deeply divided, with four separate written opinions among the seven justices — a four-justice majority; a two-justice dissent, and two concurring opinions.
