Today's theme is the Supreme Court. It's a little different from the last few, because this is one where "reasonable people can disagree," as they say, depending on your view of the Court's philosophy.

Wednesday's theme was Republican Congressional obstructionism and Romney's shape-shifting, Thursday's was the importance of preserving the position of science, Friday's was pragmatism vs ideology, and Saturday's was health care.

The Supreme Court has a huge effect on the nation's laws and culture, and the presidents who select its members have a huge effect on the Supreme Court.

Right now, the court is composed of 5 conservative members and 4 liberal members. One of the conservative members, Kennedy, is known as a swing-vote justice, and sometimes votes with the liberal members, but generally he votes on the conservative side, as in the health care case.

The members of the court are fairly old and it is reasonable to believe that one or more may retire during the next presidential term. From youngest to oldest, they are (L or C indicates liberal or conservative):

Elena Kagan, 52, L

John Roberts, 57, C

Sonia Sotomayor, 58, L

Samuel Alito, 62, C

Clarence Thomas, 64, C

Stephen Breyer, 74, L

Antonin Scalia, 76, C

Anthony Kennedy, 76, C

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 79, L

Supreme Court Justices serve until they choose to retire, sometimes lasting for over 30 years, so any appointment can have a lasting influence on the country. For instance, Scalia and Kennedy were appointed by Ronald Reagan!

Ginsburg is generally understood to be considering retirement in the next term, especially if Obama is elected. Kennedy and Scalia may also retire soon, but probably wouldn't under an Obama administration unless they really had to for health reasons. But depending on what happens, the next president may pick one to three new justices. If a liberal justice retires under a liberal president, or a conservative justice retires under a conservative president, there's no real net change, but if a liberal retires under a conservative or vice versa, that president would have the opportunity to reshape the balance of the court, since it is so closely split.

Recent cases have included a handgun ban in Chicago, the healthcare law, censorship on TV, early voting in Ohio, campaign finance (Citizens United), and Arizona immigration enforcement.

Upcoming cases may/will include DOMA and gay marriage, more issues related to healthcare, abortion, affirmative action in university admissions, the trials of arrested terrorists, immigration, the Voting Rights act, and challenges to wiretapping.

To give an example of how the Supreme Court can influence the country, one obvious example is the health care case. I don't think I really need to explain why this was important, whether you are in favor of the ACA or not. Another case that has been extremely influential is the Citizens United case. In this, the Supreme Court basically said that groups can donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns. This led to the current SuperPACs that are making most of the political ads you see today. These groups are largely unregulated, largely anonymous, and since they don't report to the candidate, largely irresponsible. These groups used to be illegal and now they are some of the main funders of political ads, especially for the Republicans (they have just recently become factors for the Democrats in the last few weeks). So this is a great example of how the court has hugely impacted your everyday life (by creating an environment where you see so many of these ads) as well as the political landscape (since political advertising is now so unregulated and anonymous), which in turn could affect your life by electing presidents based on that advertising--not just now, but for the foreseeable future.

If issues like abortion, gun control, immigration, surveillance, war crimes trials, gay marriage, and anything else mentioned above (plus a host of other things) are important to you, you should make sure to vote for the candidate that represents those views, because the president that gets elected will probably get to influence them by his choice for the next couple Supreme Court Justices.

Personally, I believe in abortion rights, in moderate gun control, in immigration policies that don't involve the harassment of innocent people, in gay marriage, in the continuance of the Voting Rights act, and in limitations on wiretapping and surveillance, so I am in favor of the kinds of Justices that President Obama has chosen so far. You may disagree here. I'm not going to even get into the philosophy behind liberal and conservative interpretations of the Constitution in the abstract, because that could take a long time. I tend to have a view half-way between the liberal and conservative interpretations.

I believe that the Justices Obama has chosen so far (Sotomayor and Kagan) are, while liberal, also somewhat moderate and pragmatic in their liberalism, so they don't vote predictably in every situation, while the Justices that conservatives tend to demand their Presidents choose are more ideological and radical in their approach to the constitution. Alito, Thomas, and Scalia are all believers in radical constitution theories that had almost no hold in the court before they became members, and if they got a stronger majority would truly change the country by negating much of our past legal and governmental structures. Roberts is not quite so ideological, and Kennedy is much less so. Ginsburg is an example of strong ideology on the left, which I am not a huge fan of either, but in general the left-leaning Justices right now are no so extreme to the left as the right-leaning Justices are extreme to the right.

Of course, Obama has also made a mark on the court by appointing two women, one of whom is Hispanic. This may not seem important to everyone, but I think it is, for a host of reasons, from acting as examples to young kids thinking about joining the legal profession to the greater breadth of viewpoints that come from a greater breadth of kinds of life experiences. (Just as an aside, Obama has also appointed more openly gay people to his administration than anyone else.) (Also as an aside, the court is currently comprised of six Catholic and three Jewish Justices, which is a fairly unrepresentative sample of American religions, and they all have an Ivy League degree of some kind, which is hardly an example of diversity, so the court could in many ways use some more demographic shaking-up.)

In the end, I trust Obama to make good choices to the Supreme Court. He was a lawyer and taught constitutional law, and I think he has important insights into what qualities a Justice should have. I trust him to select people that are pragmatic and respectful of the Constitution and American jurisprudence.