Supreme Court Likely to Be Major Issue in 2012 Elections

Liberals and conservatives are deeply divided in their views about individual Supreme Court justices and the decisions the court has rendered on hot-button issues. That disagreement is likely to spill thoroughly into next year’s election campaigns, Politico reports.

The left has focused much of its attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas, while the right has focused on Elena Kagan. In both cases, opponents of the judges have urged them to recuse themselves if the court takes up consideration of lawsuits seeking to overturn healthcare reform. Both justices have indicated they won’t stay out of such cases.

But the efforts to show that Thomas and Kagan shouldn’t participate in consideration of Obamacare are “not so much aimed at ensuring that one or the other justice will step aside, as providing fodder for a claim that a decision, whichever way it goes, is illegitimate,” New York University law professor Stephen Gillers told Politico.