John Paul Stevens

Here are excerpts from the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision barring states from imposing term limits on members of Congress: From Justice John Paul Stevens' majority opinion: Today's case presents a challenge to an amendment to the Arkansas State Constitution that prohibits the name of an otherwise-eligible candidate for Congress from appearing on the general election ballot if that candidate has already served three terms in the House of Representatives or two terms in the Senate.

They might well be the most powerful men and women in the nation, but most Americans probably couldn't pick the members of the U.S. Supreme Court out of a lineup. (Unless perhaps they were the only ones wearing long black robes.) As the court's current term draws to a close, it's issuing a series of monumental decisions this week that will affect every man, woman and child in the country. Today alone, the court handed down a split decision on Arizona's controversial immigration law, and ruled that it was unconstitutional to send juveniles to prison for life without the possibility of parole.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy had just been sworn in as the newest U.S. Supreme Court justice a few years ago when a young couple stopped him on the courthouse steps and asked him to take time out for a photograph. It was not for a photo of him. Instead, they wanted this pleasant stranger to take a snapshot of them. Kennedy dutifully complied, and the smiling couple left without a clue that the man who had snapped their picture was a Supreme Court justice.

The Supreme Court, acting Monday on nearly 1,000 appeals that had piled up over the summer, announced that it will rule on whether motorists may be stopped by the police at highway checkpoints to see if they are drunk. Despite the growing use of sobriety checkpoints in many states, including California, the high court never has ruled directly on the constitutionality of routine police stops of presumably innocent motorists.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said Thursday that public understanding of the high court would be enhanced if proceedings in some of its major cases were televised. "In my view, it's worth a try," Stevens said on the final day of the annual 9th Circuit Judicial Conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel.

The Supreme Court term that is expected to end Thursday has seen the emergence of new personalities on the bench and the transformation of a few veterans. Here is a look at some key figures during the '94-95 term. Professor Breyer: The newest member of the court, Stephen G. Breyer, hardly acted like the quiet rookie. From his first day, Breyer beamed with confidence. He often took it upon himself to summarize an hourlong argument, sounding as though no one at that moment had it quite right.

Gerald R. Ford's influence is not entirely in the past. His one Supreme Court appointee, Justice John Paul Stevens, remains a powerful voice on the high court. Over the last decade, Stevens has emerged as the leader of the court's liberal bloc. He has played the key role in opinions that upheld the right to abortion, struck down the death penalty for mentally retarded defendants and endorsed equal rights for gays and lesbians.

At the Supreme Court, long membership has its rewards. Since the mid-1970s, William H. Rehnquist and John Paul Stevens have staked out opposing views on many of the biggest issues that come before the Supreme Court: religion, the death penalty, civil rights, abortion, crime and punishment, and states' rights. Now, Rehnquist, 77, and Stevens, 82, are enjoying the peaks of their influence, swaying the court in the term that ended last week to some of their most cherished goals.

The leading voice of the U.S. Supreme Court's "liberal" bloc today is a Republican lawyer from Chicago whose family once owned the largest and grandest hotel along Michigan Avenue. His close ally is a former GOP state attorney general from New Hampshire who traces his family roots in the Republican Party back to the beginning. His great-great grandfather cast an early and crucial vote at the Republican convention of 1860 for the eventual nominee, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois.

Justice John Paul Stevens, 87, last week became the second-oldest justice in the Supreme Court's history. Only Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who retired at 90 in 1932, served to an older age. Although Stevens has given no hint of retiring and shows no sign of slowing down -- in the courtroom, he looks and sounds much as he did 20 years ago -- the question of his tenure looms over the court and the 2008 presidential campaign.