According to Jeffrey Segal and Harold Spaeth, political scientists who study the Court, judicial "attitudes", not the subtleties of legal principles, matter most in the justices' decisions.
Although one of the most sweeping of the justices' decisions in this area recently, it will almost certainly not be the last.
IN THE 15 years since the nine members of the Supreme Court effectively picked the nation's 43rd president in Bush v Gore, the justices' decisions have increasingly been regarded as falling along ideological lines.
While the justices' decisions affect over 300m Americans, and establish precedents for years to come, it is a rare individual who says or publishes something that rubs up against the wishes of the government.
The American people signaled their acceptance of judicial review as the proper way to alter the meaning of the Constitution, but only so long as the justices' decisions remained within the mainstream of popular understanding".
WASHINGTON — Just 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing and three-quarters say the justices' decisions are sometimes influenced by their personal or political views, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News.
