Attention to the Supreme Court has grown in recent years. The election's Supreme importance

President Barack Obama lost a potential campaign attack line when the Supreme Court upheld his health care law.

But the nation’s highest court still serves as one of Obama’s best tools for raising money and waking up his base.


And as Mitt Romney is discovering, invoking the Supreme Court can fire up conservatives, too.

Four Supreme Court justices enter the next term in their 70s, and any changes during the next presidential term could tip the balance of the court on some of the nation’s hottest social issues, including same-sex marriage, civil rights and abortion.

There’s also the often-overlooked aspect that the president nominates judges to fill the nation’s appellate and district courts, which produce some of the country’s most lasting decisions.

Attention to the Supreme Court has grown in recent years after a handful of high-profile rulings. Conservatives fumed over Chief Justice John Roberts’s unexpected health care opinion last month. Democrats were furious over the court’s 5-4 opinion in 2010 on Citizens United that led to a dramatic restructuring of the nation’s campaign finance system.

When the court reconvenes in October, justices will hear oral arguments on a major affirmative action case. There’s also the possibility of emergency hearings on voter ID laws that could determine November’s turnout and, conceivably, who wins the White House.

Also around the corner: potential Supreme Court cases involving same-sex marriage, the Voting Rights Act and even the perennial, go-to-your-corners brawls over abortion.

“When I’m talking to potential donors, I always raise the high court as a key factor that we have to worry about,” said Harold Ickes, president of Priorities USA Action, the super PAC backing Obama’s reelection campaign. “It’s not a big education that you have to do. You just have to remind people of the importance of the judiciary, what it means in American life and the longevity of the justices.”

Team Obama has been trying out some of its best lines on the court. First lady Michelle Obama’s stump speech emphasizes the historic addition of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina on the court, and Justice Elena Kagan. “Don’t forget those two brilliant Supreme Court justices Barack appointed,” she said this month during a fundraiser in New York. “You see how important those appointments are. And how for the first time, our sons and our daughters watched three women take their seat on our nation’s highest court — for the first time.”

Looking ahead, Vice President Joe Biden has been channeling his inner John Lennon by asking Democratic activists to close their eyes and “imagine” what Romney might do to the Supreme Court if he wins in November.

“Imagine, and I mean this, this to me is one of the most critical issues in this election, imagine what the Supreme Court will be like after four years of a Romney presidency,” Biden said this monthat the NAACP’s annual conference in Houston.

Speaking two days earlier to the National Council of La Raza in Las Vegas, Biden said, “Imagine the court with two more [Antonin] Scalias or two more Roberts on the court. Imagine, imagine what it will be like. Imagine what it will mean for civil rights, voting rights, and so much more that we fought so hard for so long to accomplish.”

At a Park City, Utah, fundraiser this month, Biden made his warning more specific to women by asking whether Roe v. Wade could survive with new Romney court picks. “Imagine what it will look like for women with six Scalias on the bench,” he said.

Romney, of course, offers a very different view — but one that also links the 2012 election and the future of the high court to fundamental freedoms.

During an April speech at the National Rife Association’s annual conference in St. Louis, Romney suggested the Second Amendment would be at risk if Obama wins a second term.

He cited the president’s public comments after oral arguments on the health care law, in which Obama made clear the Roberts Court itself was on trial. Obama “seems to believe that court decisions are only legitimate when they rule in his favor, and illegitimate if they don’t,” Romney said.

“In his first term, we’ve seen the president try to browbeat the Supreme Court,” Romney added. “In a second term, he would remake it. Our freedoms would be in the hands of an Obama Court, not just for four years, but for the next 40. That must not happen.”

But Romney’s Supreme Court message, which dates to the GOP primary season, hit a bump last month when Roberts wrote the majority opinion upholding the health law. On his campaign Web site, Romney says he “will nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, [Clarence] Thomas, and [Samuel] Alito.”

Asked by CBS News after the health care ruling whether he’d still choose a judge like Roberts, Romney replied, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t nominate someone who I knew was going to come out with a decision I violently disagreed with — or vehemently, rather, disagreed with. And he reached a conclusion, I think, that was not accurate and not an appropriate conclusion. But that being said, he’s a very bright person, and I’d look for individuals that have intelligence and believe in following the Constitution.”

Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice, a conservative group active in judicial confirmation fights, said Roberts’s opinion upholding the health law undermines the Obama campaign’s ability to use the court as a wedge issue. “I don’t know how scary it is that [Romney] might pick another person like Roberts,” he said.

Interest groups that monitor the Supreme Court are already putting the prospect of future appointments before their members. The NRA, which plans to spend at least $40 million against Obama, warns that one additional justice in the vein of Kagan and Sotomayor could overturn the 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that affirmed an individual’s rights to have guns in the home.

“Our members realize going to bed at night and praying for the health of five Supreme Court justices isn’t exactly a proven and effective means of ensuring the health and security of the Second Amendment,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.

Obama allies are citing the Supreme Court in their pleas for money and turnout.

“It’s not about getting to go to an event, it’s about the Supreme Court, about avoiding a global depression, and — in our case — about finishing our journey toward full federal equality,” Andrew Tobias, the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee and a prominent gay rights activist, wrote in a June fundraising email obtained by POLITICO.

The Supreme Court’s role in the abortion wars is moving into the campaign spotlight as well. The Obama campaign launched a TV ad this month in eight swing states saying abortion rights hang in the balance this November. “Every woman who believes decisions about our bodies and our health care should be our own is troubled Mitt Romney supports overturning Roe versus Wade,” a female narrator says in the ad.

In May, a $1.4 million Planned Parenthood Action Fund ad campaign highlighted Romney’s opposition to Roe v. Wade, which he spells out on his campaign website.

And NARAL Pro-Choice America is planning a $2 million communications campaign in 10 to 14 swing states, targeted at female pro-choice Obama 2008 supporters who have told pollsters they either aren’t sure how they’re voting or plan to support Romney. “The prospect of Mitt Romney appointing Justice [Ruth] Ginsburg’s successor should send a chill down the spine of anyone who cares about reproductive rights,” said Donna Crane, the group’s policy director.

The Susan B. Anthony List, a prominent anti-abortion rights group with an election budget of $10 million to $12 million for presidential and Senate battlegrounds, is looking to capitalize on the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the health care law.

To win the votes of Democrats opposed to abortion rights, the law said any health plan that covers abortions has to wall off federal subsidies so they don’t pay for the procedure — and Obama issued an executive order confirming that federal funds can’t be used for abortions. But anti-abortion rights groups have never been convinced that the firewall is strong enough.

CORRECTION: Due to a production error, an earlier version of this story misidentified the Supreme Court in the photo.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare last month put the issue of abortion front and center in the presidential campaign,” Susan B. Anthony List spokeswoman Mallory Quigley said. “In everything we do between now and November — targeted mail, radio, television and online ad campaigns and get-out-the vote efforts — we will be working to remind American voters that President Obama’s allegiance lies with Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby. “

A Washington Post/ABC News poll released this month asked which candidate is trusted more to pick a Supreme Court justice. Obama was favored 48 percent to 37 percent among all adults and 48 percent to 40 percent among registered voters.

Few see the Supreme Court actually becoming a prominent attack line when the candidates are speaking to the general public. “It should be, but the economic issues will far outweigh other questions,” Robert Bork, the former Reagan Supreme Court nominee now serving as a top Romney legal adviser, wrote in an email to POLITICO.

Still, there’s widespread recognition that future Supreme Court appointments will remain a focal point of campaign outreach to the base — on both sides.

“Even if it’s not the lead issue of the nightly news, I do think it figures in,” Levey said. “One of the things we’ve talked about [for possible ads or direct mail] is a list of the top 10 Supreme Court decisions we could see if Obama has a second term. … The next Roe v. Wade is going to be gay marriage.”

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) called the Supreme Court a “huge issue” in the election.

“One or two more on the liberal side and there’s no chance to stop government overreach,” he said in an interview. “Judges will become a big issue down the stretch.”

Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a consortium of progressive legal groups, welcomes the debate.

“What’s unusual this year is the fact the debate has already begun and that there’s already discussion on both sides about justices and the next election,” she said. “That means that politicians think that more people care. In my view that’s a very positive development.”

David Nather contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Alysha Love @ 07/23/2012 12:49 PM CORRECTION: Due to a production error, an earlier version of this story misidentified the Supreme Court in the photo.