Supreme Court Snapshot

Your guide to the notable cases on the high court's docket.

Washington Dispatch: Your guide to the notable cases on the high court's docket.

In Summers v. Earth Island Institute, the environmental group sued to overturn Forest Service regulations that allowed the agency to log on public land without getting public comment or allowing for an appeals process. Former Clinton-era Solicitor General Seth Waxman said at a briefing last month that Summers may be the sleeper case of the term because its outcome could have a potentially big impact on the "regulated community," i.e., big businesses. That's because this case is what's known as a facial challenge, which is a legal challenge filed to prevent harm or the loss of fundamental rights before any of those rights have actually been lost. Business groups and the Bush administration hate these type of cases (though presumably business groups will discover a new love for them if the Democrats take back the White House and the new administration starts issuing regulations they don't like).

Waxman suggested that the case fits into one of the few trends so far discerned about the Roberts court. The court dismissed a facial challenge last term in a lawsuit over voting rights. That case was filed before any elections had actually taken place, so the plaintiffs couldn't point to any single person who had lost his or her right to vote for lack of an ID, a point the court honed in on in its decision. But facial challenges are important to preserving rights that, once lost, can't be recovered, such as the right to cast a ballot in an election. Should the court continue to rein in this type of litigation, it will seriously undermine the work of civil rights and environmental groups to act preemptively to protect natural resources and fundamental rights.

Three of the environmental cases also come from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in California, the federal judiciary's last bastion of liberalism and environmentalists' favorite legal venue. Waxman speculated that the Roberts court may have taken up the environmental cases to send a signal to the circuit that the California judges are giving environmental groups too easy a ride.