In the run-up to this years presidential election, campaign speeches, political analysis, and polls always dominate the headlines.  But this year, the Supreme Court will be making big news too.  With major rulings expected on President Obama's health care law and SB1070, Arizona's contentious immigration law, the Supreme Court's positions are likely to sharply influence voter's perceptions on the role of government. Amy Howe, editor of SCOTUSblog explains how the Supreme Court's upcoming decisions could be game-changers this election.

Yesterday Attorney General Eric Holder issued a memo, assuring the Supreme Court that President Obama respects the authority of the court to overturn federal laws they find unconstitutional. This memo came after Republican challengers to the Affordable Care Act accused the President of pressuring the Court during deliberations. We discuss the controversy with Jeffrey Rosen, Professor of Law at George Washington University, and Todd Zwillich, Takeaway Washington correspondent.

The Supreme Court begins three days of oral arguments today on the constitutionality of President Obama's health care overhaul. People lined up outside the Supreme Court building in Washington beginning on Friday hoping to get the chance to see the proceedings today. Kathie McClure is a trial lawyer from Atlanta, Georgia, and Reverend Rob Schenck is the President of the National Clergy Council, a network of pastors and denominational leaders.

The Supreme Court unanimously agreed yesterday to reject a lawsuit brought on by six states, New York City, and several land trusts, seeking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from major power plants. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that under the Clean Air Act, the case must be addressed by the Environmental Protection Agency, rather than by the courts. The Supreme Court maintains their 2007 ruling that only the EPA can dictate regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, but meanwhile Congress is trying to strip the EPA of its very ability to regulate these emissions. 

How do you define the right to free speech? Some would argue it means being allowed to say what you believe, even when it's not popular. Others would say it means getting a good look at what kind of prescriptions that your doctor has given you. At least, that's the argument being made in a Supreme Court case today, in which company IMS Health will make a case for allowing pharmaceutical companies to get a gander at just what kind of prescriptions you're picking up at the pharmacy for marketing purposes. 

"We've been regulating campaign contributions since 1907," The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin reminds us at a time when it seems like many of the regulations may be overturned. The Supreme Court has had some flare ups recently over the string of cases brought in front of the court. With Justice Elena Kagan, the Court not only has the largest number of female Justices on board, but also a four to five weighting of Democrat versus Republican appointments. Although the court looks different, says Toobin, the rule of five still applies.

For the past 11 years, 1.5 million women have been taking on the world’s largest corporation, Wal-Mart, for what they claim is a corporate practice of gender discrimination. The case would be the largest employment discrimination suit in U.S. history, damages could be in the billions, and the whole process has already dragged on over a decade. But whether that suit will ever be heard in court still has to be decided. Today the United States Supreme Court will hear argument in Wal-Mart vs. Dukes. Their task is to decide whether such a large and diverse group of people — working for shops across the country — can even be considered a “class” and therefore capable of raising a claim.

Adam Liptak, Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times, describes the first day of hearings in the controversial Supreme Court case between the Westboro Baptist Church and a man who is suing them for protesting outside his son's military funeral in 2006.

He nicknamed her "Shorty," and she refers to him as one of her "judicial heroes," but in their storied lives and careers, neither of them probably expected what transpired in yesterday's meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. As Solicitor General Elena Kagan sits on the precipice of becoming only the fourth woman in history to sit on the Supreme Court, the name of another barrier-breaking justice, Thurgood Marshall, may turn into her biggest liability.

With no history of judicial activity to examine, Republicans are focusing on the year Kagan spent clerking for Marshall in 1988, when she was 28-years-old. To the befuddlement of some, Republicans are decrying the civil rights pioneer as a "well-known liberal activist judge," as Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the raking Republican on the Judiciary committee, described him. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), told The Salt Lake Tribune that he wasn't sure whether he would vote to confirm Marshall if given the chance.