Editor’s Note: Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe is one of the United States’ preeminent constitutional scholars. An informal advisor to Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, he is one of the presumptive Democratic nominee’s most ardent supporters. The liberal legal icon talks with AC360’s Jack Gray about the impact the next president will have on The Supreme Court, the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned and why Barack Obama is the most amazing student he ever taught.

Q. The economy, two wars, an energy crisis … are legal and judicial issues as important in this election?
A. I think they’re enormously important because they set the framework within which everything else is addressed. If we believe in democracy and the rule of law then an administration that is casual or reckless about the framework of the constitution simply can’t be trusted with either war or peace. So I think that although bread and butter issues of gas prices and home foreclosures are going to dominate individual consciousness, at some level people have to remember that it is our legal system and our political structure that defines our greatness as a nation and that projects our presence onto the world stage and indirectly accounts for our safety and security. If we don’t stand for a fundamental set of legal values abroad we will have an impossible time in the battle of ideas that constitutes the war on terrorism. Keep reading

Faye Wattleton
President, Center for the Advancement of Women

Sen. John McCain spoke yesterday about the need to appoint Supreme Court justices committed to judicial restraint and the Constitution’s original intent. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been remarkably inarticulate over arguably the most important outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

The Court is delicately balanced. Last year’s decision by the Court (Gonzalez v. Carhart) to criminalize a method of abortion, even when a woman’s health is jeopardized, eliminated one of Roe v. Wade’s seminal protections. It was decided by a 5-4 majority, favoring a specific religious view of the fetus. In Ledbetter v. Goodyear, 5 to 4 of the Justices denied the right of a worker to seek pay equality after 19 years of discrimination.

Whoever gets elected President in November will make the decision of the century –whether judicial restraint or activism is more important in the Court that arbitrates the rules of our society.

Editor’s note: Faye Wattleton is former president of Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit family planning organization that provides reproductive health, maternal and child health services, and presents birth control options and abortion services.

Jami Floyd
360° Contributor
“In Session” Anchor

The US Supreme Court yesterday issued a ruling in the most important voting case since Bush v. Gore. The case is Crawford v. Marion County, in which the Court upheld Indiana’s law requiring a government-issued photo ID as a condition of voting. Legal scholars will be analyzing the decision for weeks and years to come, but here are a few things we already know.

First, as the Court acknowledged, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Indiana. Indeed, there is not one recorded case of voter fraud in Indiana based on misidentification. Still, (and even though the Indiana law could disenfranchise real voters) the Justices held that the plaintiffs had not proven that the Indiana law violates the Constitution by imposing the requirement.

So, why should we care about the lofty decisions of nine people in black robes?
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A pro-gun advocate holds up a sign outside the Supreme Court in Washington, as the court heard arguments in an attempt to overturn the District of Columbia's firearms ban. The District of Columbia is asking the Supreme Court to preserve the capital's ban on handguns in a major case over the meaning of the Second Amendment's “right to keep and bear arms.

Kevin R.C. Gutzman
J.D., Ph.D.

Neither side has it right in the Second Amendment case currently before the Supreme Court.

District of Columbia v. Heller is an appeal from a federal appeals court’s decision that the D.C. gun control laws violate the Second Amendment. The circuit court’s decision reflected what I believe is the emerging scholarly consensus around the position that the Second Amendment involves an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Gun control advocates on one side and gun rights advocates on the other dispute this question. Since I am known as an originalist, I was asked to sign an amicus brief arguing that the Second Amendment bans laws like D.C.’s.  I refused to sign.

Does that mean that I do not believe that the Second Amendment reflected an individual right to keep and bear arms? No, it means that I do not believe that the District of Columbia is governed by the Second Amendment.

Why? Because the District of Columbia, insofar as it behaves as a state, is properly treated as a pseudo-state by the Supreme Court.

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