Likely reflecting the predominant public reactions to recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court in the areas of privacy/abortion rights, firearms access and use, and environmental enforcement options, nationwide polling reflects a notable diminution in respect for the High Court. Among other judicial actions this week, a federal court stopped the executive branch from implementing more humane standards for the arrest and deportation of immigrants while a jury in another found a former senior White House advisor guilty of contempt of Congress. All of this happens as our nation’s students (and their parents and family members) anticipate a return to classrooms—where the First Amendment law and judicial interpretation of freedom of expression remains scattered and unpredictable. What are the consequences of decisions made by America’s judges—including a western State’s initiative to award civil damages to private parties who identify violators of its prohibition on assault and other types of highly violent weapons? And what standards might reasonably guide students inclined to express their views—and publish newspaper articles—about these and other challenging topics of the day?

In its next term, the United States Supreme Court will be addressing the legitimacy of an obscure and unfounded theory that only state legislatures—and not courts—are empowered to resolve election challenges; the anticipated return of the High Court to voting issues prompts a review and revisiting of one of the central pieces of civil rights legislation in our nation’s history. Intended to remedy generations of racial and other forms of discrimination in polling, the Voting Rights Act clearly established prohibitions on attempts to disenfranchise Americans of color; in its several implementation aspects, the law also vested in the United States Department of Justice unequivocal rights to prohibit changes in state and local laws denying Blacks and other minorities access to the polls—and to petition the courts to remedy discriminatory protocols and unfair practices. In two major decisions of recent years, the Justices have effectively eliminated both of those remedial devices to address voting violations. What do those rulings mean for the present and the future, and what might the United States Congress do to remedy legislatively the elimination of these key provisions of the Voting Rights Act?

Not to be diminished in significance by recent opinions on privacy rights and firearms, the High Court has also been exceptionally focused on other topics that are equally meaningful to the lives and livelihoods of Americans in the 21st Century. Among the more than 60 decisions issued in this term, the Justices limited the authority of the chief executive to impose environmental standards on polluting companies, affirmed the presidential prerogative to permit asylum-seekers to remain in the United States while their applications are pending, upheld the rights of death row inmates to engage with their religious leaders prior to execution and even to challenge the means by which they are put to death, promoted religious liberty by permitting a high school coach to prayer with his team on the playing field and supporting the options of parents to receive state tax monies to support the religious education of their children, and found that so-called Miranda rights do not permit a former defendant to sue for a violation of them. In a series of additional cases on college admissions, LGBTQIA rights, wetlands protections, and voting oversight, the Court has already begun to fill its docket for the next term. What do all of these cases mean for our nation, and where is the Court likely to go in addressing the present and coming challenges of our time?

As discussed and predicted in the first two broadcasts, the United States Supreme Court this week changed the course not only of American jurisprudence but also the legal standards for the conduct and behavior our nation’s residents: In its dramatic reversal of nearly a half-century of legal tradition, the High Court found that the Constitution does not establish a right to abortion and related reproductive rights, effectively returning those critically important issues to the States. And in its other significant ruling, the Justices expanded the scope of the Second Amendment to permit the carry and presumably the use of guns beyond the home and into public places of common gathering. What do the written opinions in these two colossal rulings actually say, how will they likely affect practices and policies on abortion and guns in communities nationwide, and what did the dissenting Justices voice in stark opposition to the decisions of this historic week?

The current docket of the United States Supreme Court also features thorny and controversial issues in the areas of climate change, religious liberty, and asylum seekers. Among those is the power of the executive branch to impose restrictions on the emission of so-called greenhouse gases to address our environmental problems, the meaning and import of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state in the financial support of schools and the conduct of teacher-coaches, and the authority of our federal government to impose conditions on the movement into and presence in the United States of refugees fleeing persecution and other human rights violations in their home countries. What are the sources (factual and legal) of these significant constitutional and statutory cases and what are the actual implications of decisions by the High Court on the established roles of the Congress and the White House in exercising their delegated governing powers?

Beginning with its first hints at a constitutional right to privacy in the 1920s and continuing through its full and formal embrace of such a personal prerogative in the mid-1960s, the United States Supreme Court has identified from various sources in our founding document what one justice described as “the right to an inviolate personality” and “the right to be left alone.” That seminal doctrine has been invoked by our judiciary to ensure privacy protections in many, important areas of contemporary American life and livelihood for over a century—including but not limited to access to reproductive medical services and, in particular, abortion. What are the procedural and factual trappings of the case now before the High Court that will likely reverse a 49-year-old civil rights tradition? And what are the consequences of such a ruling for residents in various states nationwide (including potential impacts on other, equally well-settled privacy interests)?

Thirteen years ago, the United States Supreme Court said for the first time in American history that the Constitution establishes a personal right to gun ownership in the home for defensive purposes. Soon in its present term the High Court will be issuing its next, major opinion interpreting the meaning and import of the Second Amendment: The Justices are wrestling with the constitutionality of a New York State law requiring that applicants to carry firearms in public describe their particularized need to do so. Will they uphold the legality of that process intended to promote community safety and security or will they expand protected gun rights beyond private residences to public-community venues (as the oral arguments of late last year reflect)? And what policy options remain for federal and state legislatures attempting to address our nation’s gun violence challenges? [This inaugural broadcast also includes a discussion of the intended purpose and planned focus of the program—along with an explanation of its curious title!]