Next High Court War: Federalism

The culture war on the Supreme Court is over, despite what rhetoric from current Republican candidates might lead you to believe. The three biggest cases the court is preparing to take up—the Arizona immigration law, a Texas voting-rights case, and President Obama's health-care overhaul—have shifted the battlefield from the social issues of the last 25 years to questions of state and federal power, write Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick. “In sum, the court is hearing three political cases about the allocation of political powers at a moment in which Americans on both sides of the political spectrum have come to distrust government solutions to any problems.”