"This is all about an informed vote," Justice Kourlis said.
Even the moderate swing vote, Justice Kennedy, was the 10th most conservative over that period.
The majority had "acted unwisely" to "stop the counting of legal votes," Justice Stevens said.
It appeared that a majority of the justices, including the likely swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, had serious doubts as to whether the law served any legitimate purpose.
My own take is that this is a very close case that will almost certainly come down to the court's typical median vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy.
"If you can stack a legislature in this way, what incentive is there for a voter to exercise his vote?" Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked.
In 2005, Scalia was endorsing a broad interpretation of the commerce clause and the necessary and proper clause, the clauses now coming under scrutiny from the majority, including the swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Perhaps the most revealing cultural marker in the case was that the swing vote, Justice Lewis Powell, told one of his clerks at the time that he had never met a gay person.
"Today marks a watershed moment in American history," declared Dr. James C. Dobson, founder and chairman of the conservative Focus on the Family, "the resignation of a swing-vote justice on the Supreme Court and the opportunity to change the court's direction".
It turns out that in Mississippi (as in about 30 other states) the top jurists are elected, and one swing-vote justice happens to be up for election in the coming year.
