Kagan Avoids Judging Over Half of Upcoming Supreme Court Cases

There are over 52 appeals cases waiting to be heard in the Supreme court and more are waiting. However, Kagan won't hear about half of them, which means that she won't he a deciding factor their outcomes. She's repeating what she did in her former job as Solicitor General in order to avoid being viewed as biased and having conflicts of interest. In other words, she's dodging the issues.

One of the most prominent cases is the issue military funeral protests in Snyder v. Phelps. The point of contentions is the balancing of privacy and freedom of speech. The father of a slained marine sed the Westboro Baptist Church for violating the privacy of his son's funeral. Lower courts were unable to settle the case so it went all the way to the Supreme court. The protestors are obvious nutcases and the justices should resolve this particular case quickly.

In the death penalty case, Skinner v. Switzer, the death row inmate Skinner claims that modern DNA testing of old evidence will clear his name. The point of contention is whether or not new DNA evidence can be used to exonerate prisoners from death row. There's a chance that some of them might be innocent, but most of them are likely not and just want the additional testing of past evidence to delay or avoid execution as long as possible.

In a case that's reminiscent of the comic book censorship many years ago, Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants, the issue under argument is whether or not free speech applies to selling violent video games to children underage. It's obvious that young children are impressionable enough to be badly influenced by violent video games, but the gaming industry doesn't want to lose their potential profits. It's another case of money versus morals.

The separation of church and state becomes issue again in Arizona Christian School Tuition Org. v. Winn and Garriott v. Winn. The issue is that allowing tax writeoffs for religious groups awarding scholarships is basically an indirect state sponsorship of religion. The organzations should be able to hand out the scholarships on their own without financial assistance from the government. Unless they're awarding it to students attending nonreligious schools too, they should get tax writeoffs.

The issue of immigration culminates in the case Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting. The Chamber of Commere complained that Legal Arizona Workers Act, which punishes businesses that knowingly hire illegal workers, is unenforceable without requiring businesses to use E-Verify. In other words, businesses can still hire illegal workers in Arizona. So why is the Federal government allowing this? They should resolve this quickly. Illegal workers are a burden to our economy.

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