Supreme Court returns, firearms regulation and detainees on agenda

The Supreme Court returns from its midterm break Monday morning, one controversial decision behind it and the potential for more ahead.

The justices already might have defined this term with their January ruling that declared unconstitutional decades-old restrictions on the way corporations and unions may spend their money in the electoral process. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court ruled 5 to 4 that keeping corporations from using their profits to support or oppose candidates violated the First Amendment.

The decision is controversial enough that Democrats in Congress already are preparing legislation that would blunt the effects of the change. Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly disagree with the decision, and President Obama denounced it and called for a legislative response in his State of the Union Address.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was among the justices in the audience for that speech, and his televised reaction to what he apparently considered the president's mischaracterization of the ruling produced a rare and visceral interaction between the judicial and the political branches.

There might be more conflict ahead.

The court already has heard, but not yet decided, whether an attempt by Congress to ban depictions of animal cruelty sweeps so broadly that it is unconstitutional. And it is still deliberating a challenge that claims a board established by Congress to regulate accounting firms in the wake of the Enron scandal violates the separation of powers.

The justices next week will turn to the question of whether a law that allows federal prosecutors to pursue private and government officials who deprive shareholders and taxpayers of their "honest services" is so vague as to be unconstitutional. The law has been key to many of the nation's most high-profile convictions of financial giants and politicians.

Also upcoming on the court's agenda before it finishes hearing oral arguments at the end of April:

-- Whether the Second Amendment applies to attempts by states and cities to regulate firearms. The justices ruled in 2008 that the amendment guarantees an individual's right to own a firearm for self-defense. But the decision in Heller v. District of Columbia applied only to the federal government and its enclaves such as the District.

-- Whether a portion of the Patriot Act that makes it illegal to provide "assistance" or "advice" to groups that have been designated as terrorist organizations by the federal government violates free speech guarantees in the First Amendment.

-- Whether voters in Washington state who signed petitions calling for a referendum on the state's civil union laws have a right to keep their names private. The state says open government laws require that the names be disclosed.

And the court is slated -- at least, for now -- to decide what power judges have to release detainees at Guantanamo Bay who have been found not to be enemy combatants. The Obama administration has told the justices that ongoing efforts to find places for those detainees to go means there is no immediate controversy for the court to settle, and the case should be dismissed.