“Let me tell you something: The Ohio Supreme Court is the backstop for all those other votes you are going to cast. Whatever the governor does, whatever your state representative, your state senator does, whatever they do, we are the ones that will decide whether it is constitutional; we decide whether it’s lawful. We decide what it means, and we decide how to implement it in a given case. So, forget all those other votes if you don’t keep the Ohio Supreme Court conservative.”

— Ohio Supreme Court Justice Judith French, quoted by the Columbus Dispatch.

“A national Republican group is spending heavily on judicial elections in some states, prompting judges to get more involved in their campaigns as they seek to hold on to their seats,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The effort to influence judicial elections is largely Republican–for now, no Democratic group is systematically contributing to such races… The money pouring in from out-of-state groups is upsetting genteel traditions under which judges in some states faced little opposition and avoided the ethically tricky process of soliciting big money and stumping for votes from constituents they might face in court. The attention is an acknowledgment of the role that state supreme courts play in shaping the business climate and social and government policies.”

“The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, a surprise action that leaves the issue unresolved nationwide,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Seven appeals on the issue involving same-sex marriage bans in five states had landed on the court’s doorstep while the justices were away on their summer break. State officials defending same-sex marriage bans, as well as gay couples challenging them, had urged the Supreme Court to intervene, citing the need for nationwide clarity.”

“But the justices rejected those appeals in a brief written order. The court, as is its custom, offered no explanation for why it decided not to get involved.”

Rick Hasen: “The fact that the Supreme Court, without saying a peep, is letting court-ordered same sex marriages go forward in Utah is a huge deal.”

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told Elle magazine that says she’s not going to retire as long as she can still “do the job full steam.”

Said Ginsburg: “Who do you think President Obama could appoint at this very day, given the boundaries that we have? If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see on the court… So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided. As long as I can do the job full steam…. I think I’ll recognize when the time comes that I can’t any longer. But now I can.”

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told Yahoo News she has no plans to retire.

Said Ginsburg: “My answer is I will do this job as long as I can do it full steam. When I feel myself slipping. When I can no longer think as sharply, write as quickly, that will be the time for me to leave the court.”

“Days before an Arizona murderer gasped and snorted for more than 90 minutes and died nearly two hours after his execution began, a conservative federal appeals judge called for replacing lethal injection with firing squads, saying the public must acknowledge that executions are ‘brutal, savage events,'” the Los Angeles Times reports.

Write Judge Alex Kozinski: “Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and beautiful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments. But executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should we. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.”

Gallup: “Americans remain divided in their assessments of the U.S. Supreme Court, with 47% approving of the job it is doing, and 46% disapproving. These ratings are consistent with approval last September, when 46% approved and 45% disapproved, and rank among the lowest approval ratings for the court in Gallup’s 14-year trend.”

“In a decision that drew an unusually fierce dissent from the three female justices, the Supreme Court sided Thursday with religiously affiliated nonprofit groups in a clash between religious freedom and women’s rights,” the New York Times reports.

“The decision temporarily exempts a Christian college from part of the regulations that provide contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act.”

“The court’s order was brief, provisional and unsigned, but it drew a furious reaction from the three female members, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. The order, Justice Sotomayor wrote, was at odds with the 5-to-4 decision on Monday in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, which involved for-profit corporations.”

Chief Justice John Roberts “joined with unexpected allies–his liberal colleagues–in an alliance that drew some of the Supreme Court’s major decisions closer toward the ideological middle in the term just concluded,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The approach separated the chief justice, who has been on the court nine terms, from the other conservative justices–who ended up breaking with him at times.”

“The balancing act sometimes left conservatives such as Justice Antonin Scalia fuming over what they saw as missed opportunities to reduce the federal government’s treaty powers, curb environmental regulation and relax limits on antiabortion activism outside women’s clinics.”

Conservatives won a big victory at the Supreme Court yesterday but “even as conservatives celebrated coming out on the winning side of a divisive social issue, their court victory may have also handed Democrats an issue that will turn out liberal voters in the fall,” the New York Times reports.

“Democrats have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the last several years to cast Republicans as callous and extreme on women’s health issues. And party strategists believe their ability to hold on to the Senate this year depends in large part on persuading women that a Republican Senate and White House would only produce more outcomes like Monday’s ruling, which they contend is harmful and hostile to women’s rights.”

Wonk Wire: Opinion roundup on the Hobby Lobby case

Ezra Klein points out that today’s Supreme Court “is the direct result of George W. Bush’s contested election. If Al Gore had won the presidency in 2000 and reelection in 2004, then William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor would likely have been replaced by Democrats, and Supreme Court jurisprudence in the years since would be very different.”

Rick Hasen notes that near the end of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in the Hobby Lobby case today, he writes that it is not the Court’s job to question the “wisdom” of Congress.

“The Court has shown no such deference when it comes to the need for campaign finance regulation or to protect the voting rights of racial minorities and others. The Roberts Court has overturned or limited every campaign finance law it has examined (aside from disclosure laws). It has struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. How much deference did Congress get in those cases? None.”

“Well when is Congress wise and entitled to deference? When the Court agrees with Congress’s approach.”

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 split, ruled that “closely held” companies can on religious grounds opt out of a federal health-care law requirement that companies provide contraception coverage for employees, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The court’s five conservatives wrote that private companies, such as Hobby Lobby Stores, can’t be forced to provide contraceptive health services that violate their owner’s religious beliefs. The case was the first challenge to the Affordable Care Act to reach the Supreme Court since 2012, when the justices upheld most of the health-care overhaul against a constitutional challenge.”

National Journal: “How deeply the court’s decision undermines the contraception mandate will depend largely on how business owners respond… The furthest-reaching implications could come further down the road; the Obama administration and its allies have warned that companies will rely on the ruling to seek exemptions from anti-discrimination laws.”

Wonk Wire: More Obamacare lawsuits poised to follow

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court “limited a president’s power to make recess appointments when the White House and the Senate are controlled by opposite parties, scaling back a presidential authority as old as the republic,” NBC News reports.

“The case arose from a political dispute between President Obama and Senate Republicans, who claimed he had no authority to put three people on the National Labor Relations Board in January 2012 when the Senate was out of town.”

“This is the time of year that the news media roll out a familiar graphic: Nine head shots of Supreme Court justices, arrayed from most liberal to most conservative,” the New York Times reports.

“In spacing the head shots at equal intervals, the graphics suggest a steady procession from left to right. But the reality is a series of clusters, a few loners and several telling gaps.”

“In a sweeping victory for privacy rights in the digital age, the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest,” the New York Times reports.

“While the decision will offer protection to the 12 million people arrested every year, many for minor crimes, its impact will most likely be much broader. The ruling almost certainly also applies to searches of tablet and laptop computers, and its reasoning may apply to searches of homes and businesses and of information held by third parties like phone companies.”