The Arizona immigration laws are likely to be upheld by the Supreme Court. This outcome is somewhat predictable, given the majority of conservative judges on the bench in this court, with one of the few of Obama's own liberal appointees, Justice Elena Kagan excusing herself from the case because of prior involvement with it. The decision will represent a major blow against President Obama and his party, as he has fervently criticized the Arizona law and promised to push for immigration reform if re-elected in November.
The fact that this case, along with that over the Affordable Care Act, have both ended up in the Supreme Court for it to decide, speaks volumes of the way politics is conducted in the US today. Parties have had to pick opposing sides on issues and stick to them and defend them. Polarization, not necessarily among the American public, but rather in the political system between the two parties, has become a defining characteristic of American politics, and has led to deadlocks in Congress and the White House that eventually find their way to their last resort, the judiciary.
One may be reminded of the case of Brown v. Board of Education where the Supreme Court was also bestowed upon with the task of deciding on controversial matters that had split that nation. However, although health care and immigration are indeed controversial matters, it is hard to argue that they divide Americans as much as segregation did. In fact the case over health care is perhaps mostly a dispute between the two parties. We recall that the Court's decision in Brown was met with enormous resistance and required decades of hard work on part of all three branches of government to eventually implement. The court's decisions on health care and immigration today, probably will not be met with any kind of resistance like that. Though media reports seem to suggest these issues are splitting the nation into pieces, in reality, as journalist Ronald Brownstein points out in his book The Second Civil War, this is only the distorted sense of reality presented by polarization, which amplifies the most extreme voices, whereas all the majority of Americans want from their politicians, is just pragmatic compromises, and not ideological crusades.
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