High court poised for a month of high-stakes rulings

(CNN) -- Four weeks. Four major legal rulings. What the Supreme Court decides by the end of June could fundamentally change lives and legacies on a range of politically explosive issues.





-- Gene patents: Can "products of nature" like isolated parts of the human genome be held as the exclusive intellectual property of individuals and companies, through government-issued patents?

"It's almost unimaginable the number of things that the Supreme Court is going to decide that will affect all Americans in the next month," said Thomas Goldstein, a top Washington attorney and publisher of SCOTUSblog.com.




And no one is talking-- an unbroken tradition of discretion rare in leak-loving Washington.


The high court holds fast to an unofficial but self-imposed deadline to have all draft opinions finished by June 1. They are circulated to colleagues, and subsequent dissents and concurrencies must be submitted by June 15. Nothing is final until the decision is released to the public. Votes can and do change at the last minute.

The last four weeks beginning Tuesday will be the busiest, most chaotic time. Justices and their law clerks are holed up in chambers, furiously working to frame and craft the final opinions, making sure every fact, every footnote, every legal theory is fully checked and articulated.

Ginsburg calls it the "flood season." She and her eight colleagues know they are writing their legacies with these four issues. The outcome may be disputed, but the constitutional reasoning -- at least in the justice's own minds -- must be sound.




-- Federal benefits. The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, is a 1996 law that says for federal purposes, marriage is defined as only between one man and one woman. That means federal tax, Social Security, pension, and bankruptcy benefits, family medical leave protections -- and a thousand more such provisions -- do not apply to gay and lesbian couples, such as Edie Windsor. The 84-year-old New York woman is the key plaintiff in the DOMA fight. She was forced to pay more than $363,000 in extra estate taxes when her longtime spouse, Thea Spyer, died.

-- State referendums. The California high court had earlier concluded same-sex marriage was legal, but the 2008 voter-approved Proposition 8 abolished it. The high court is being asked to establish same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, but could also decide a more narrow question: whether a state can revoke that right through referendum once it has already been recognized.

The political, social, and legal stakes of this long-simmering debate will once again put the high court at the center of national attention, as it was in last summer's ruling upholding the massive health care reform law championed by President Barack Obama.

Ten states now allow gays and lesbians to legally wed: Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia. Delaware and Minnesota's recently passed laws take effect this summer.

It is estimated about 120,000 legally married homosexual couples live in the United States.


Voters in three states last November approved same-sex marriage, marking the first time the ballot was used to approve such unions. California is the only state to allow, then revoke same-sex marriage.



This "legal letdown" could turn on "standing," or the legal authority or eligibility to make the case. California's governor has refused to defend Proposition 8 in court, leaving a coalition of private groups to step in. Can they satisfy court scrutiny by establishing there would be legitimate "harm" to themselves if the lower court ruling stands?

The justices could also "DIG" it -- or have the case "dismissed as improvidently granted." Basically the justices would be saying they should not have taken the Proposition 8 appeal in the first place.


The differences between rejecting the case on standing or DIG grounds would be important. A DIG would likely mean lower court rulings striking down Proposition 8 would hold, allowing California gay and lesbian couples to marry if they chose. How quickly that would happen would be unclear if further legal challenges were filed.

But a "standing" ruling would likely nullify everything, perhaps forcing both sides to start all over again in the lower courts, and limiting the reach of gay marriage to perhaps only a few California counties. Another likely statewide referendum next year could finally settle the matter. Recent polls show growing support for same-sex marriage in California, reflecting a trend nationwide.


So the court could also dismiss that case on standing grounds, but most legal analysts see a more substantive ruling on DOMA's merits.


Rapid-fire reaction to these big cases will be swift and furious from the professional punditry and halls of government. Some individual Americans stand to gain from the decisions, others could be hurt financially, emotionally, and physically.

So why entrust all this in the hands of nine judges?

The Supreme Court usually gets the last word in these matters, regardless of whether one agrees with the decisions. That is true even in matters of life and death, which many argue are the stakes in this health care debate.

Justice Robert Jackson, on the court from 1941 to 1954, may have put it best: "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final."