While we wait for the main course -- the Affordable Care Act case -- the Court offers some intriguing appetizers

Reuters

The clerk will not cry "Oyez!" until Monday, but the Supreme Court's October term has begun -- with less than a whimper -- with the Troy Davis case. It will probably end with a bang, as the Court decides the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.

These bookends offer instruction in how the world's most powerful court sees its role. I'm sure most of the justices are mystified by the criticism -- most cogently written by Dahlia Lithwick and Lisa T. McElroy -- of its still unexplained three-and-a-half-hour radio silence on the evening of Troy Davis's execution. In the Court's hermetically sealed world, the actual people affected by its decisions aren't just unimportant, they are basically nonexistent. Less than four hours is practically neutrino speed in Court terms.

I wouldn't be surprised if the health care challenge looks different to the justices than to outsiders as well. Media figures and barroom authorities alike view it through the lens of the 2012 election. Rejection of the "individual mandate," they reason, would be a sharp, and perhaps fatal, blow to the shaky prospects of a second Obama term. Since five of the nine clearly despise Obama, the assumption runs, these five will rush to deliver the coup de grace.