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http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-oe-1004-amar-supreme-court-preview-20151004-story.html

Op-Ed Five Supreme Court cases to watch that could make history

Last year the Supreme Court decided several momentous cases involving some of America's most contentious topics, including same-sex marriage and Obamacare. The new term, which begins Monday, is also full of controversial cases that could help shape the emerging identity of the Roberts court and affect the direction of the country.

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Next, capital punishment. This year's docket already features two cases centered on death penalty procedures. The more important of the two, Hurst vs. Florida, concerns Florida, one of a small number of states that allow a jury to recommend the death penalty by simple majority vote. Even then, the jury's recommendation is advisory; the judge ultimately decides whether to impose the death sentence. It's possible that the court will deem that process too flimsy.

There's also a chance that the court will address whether the Constitution allows the death penalty in any case. For decades, the general permissibility of capital punishment has been firmly settled in the Supreme Court. Last term, however, Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that he might be prepared to rule it unconstitutional in all or virtually all cases. Breyer is well known as a pragmatist, disinclined to tilt at windmills. So perhaps he now thinks that the court's pivotal justice — Anthony Kennedy — is open to a more sweeping assault on the death penalty.

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A dozen years ago, a 5-4 majority allowed the University of Michigan law school to give a boost to ethnic minority applicants. But since then, Justice Samuel Alito, who generally frowns on affirmative action, has replaced Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote the Michigan opinion. The new swing vote on this topic is no longer O'Connor, but Kennedy, who has registered strong discomfort with admissions plans that afford racial preferences to individuals.

It's difficult to overstate the potential consequences here. The court's ruling in Fisher might well apply not only to public universities but also to private colleges and universities that are bound to the same norms as public schools by virtue of federal funding statutes.

Voting rights are also on the docket. In Evenwel vs. Abbott, the justices will decide whether, under the 14th Amendment, each state legislative voting district must simply contain an equal numbers of people, or must instead have an equal number of voters or voting-age citizens.

This dispute, nominally about redistricting procedures, also implicates the national debate about immigrants — another 21st century flashpoint — because if states must stop counting noncitizens for representation purposes, areas with more noncitizens (which tend to lean Democratic) would lose clout. The justices could leave the answer up to the states, or do something much more destabilizing.

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Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.