Court's '08 term exposed division

By Tom Ramstack | Saturday, June 28, 2008

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The Supreme Court's final week of decisions set precedents on issues from guns to the death penalty that are likely to reverberate for years, but they also revealed fractures on the court.

On the last day of the 2007-08 term, the court released its most far-reaching decision, affirming that the Second Amendment gave individuals a personal right to own handguns - previously banned by the District of Columbia.

The gun decision was a major victory for conservatives, but the court also handed them two major defeats - ruling that Guantanamo Bay prisoners had rights to court hearings and that the death penalty could not be imposed for the rape of a child.

All three of those decisions came on 5-4 votes.

Unlike Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s first term on the Supreme Court, his third term was marked by split decisions similar to those of his predecessor, former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

"In the past two years, we've had a lot more 5-to-4 decisions than we did in his first term," said Susan Low Bloch, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University Law Center. "I think the first year was sort of a honeymoon."

The group that emerged with the most victories may have been the business community, though some of the key victories also came on narrow votes.

A single vote determined that Exxon Mobil could have its punitive damages for the 1989 oil spill at Prince William Sound in Alaska reduced from $2.5 billion to $507 million, and determined that bankers, accountants and their lawyers were not liable to investors for fraud when their investments drop in value.

The Exxon Mobil case is shaping up as one of the most important business decisions in years. The justices limited the punitive damages in lawsuits for maritime accidents to no more than the compensatory damages, which cover only provable injuries, money loss or property damage. Punitive damages are intended to punish wrongdoers.

"For us, that's exactly the kind of approach you should use," said Amar Sarwal, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's general litigation counsel. Legal formulas that produce "predictable" results help businesses anticipate the outcomes of lawsuits, he said.

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