Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- The next U.S. president won't have to wait for a vacancy to start influencing the Supreme Court.

The high court's term, which starts next week, underscores the president's power to shape the court's rulings through his top courtroom lawyer, the solicitor general. Acting Solicitor General Gregory Garre is seeking to limit lawsuits by prescription-drug patients, defending a government crackdown on foul language on television and backing workers who sue their employers for retaliation.

Past practice indicates that those positions will hold great sway -- as will those of the next president starting Jan. 20. Either Barack Obama or John McCain will be able to steer the court on a host of questions concerning terrorism, civil rights and business.

``It just is impossible to overstate the influence of the solicitor general's office and their advocates and how much the justices look to them for guidance,'' said Tom Goldstein, a Supreme Court specialist at the Washington law firm Akin Gump.

The court will get a head start on its term today, when it will issue a list of new cases it will take up.

The court's most recent term highlighted the importance of the solicitor general, a lawyer informally known as ``the 10th justice'' because of his special relationship with the court. Paul Clement, who stepped down as solicitor general in June after three years, was on the winning side in 20 of the 25 cases in which the office filed a so-called friend-of-the-court brief.

Business Cases

The impact was especially pronounced in business cases. Clement was on the winning side in six of seven cases in which he opposed the position of the Chamber of Commerce, itself a highly successful player at the court.

In the 2008-09 term, the Bush administration is backing companies in perhaps the biggest case now on the court's agenda, Wyeth's appeal of a $6.8 million award to a woman who lost her arm after being injected with an anti-nausea drug. Wyeth is seeking to limit patient claims that drug companies didn't do enough to warn about potential dangers.

The administration contends that state-court juries shouldn't be able to second-guess the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's judgment about a product's safety. Government lawyers would bar suits that claim a drug's FDA-approved packaging insert didn't provide an adequate warning.

``FDA's approval of a drug, including its labeling, reflects the agency's expert weighing of the health risks and benefits of the drug as labeled,'' the administration argued in a brief signed by Clement before he left his post.

Reinforcing Position

The FDA laid out that stance in the preamble to a 2006 rule. The agency this year sought to reinforce its position with a proposed rule that would explicitly bar companies from modifying packaging inserts in the absence of newly acquired information.

Critics of the FDA approach say it amounts to a shift for the government. ``At least until 2002, FDA consistently took the position that state failure-to-warn litigation enhances consumer safety,'' former FDA commissioners Donald Kennedy and David Kessler argued in a court filing backing the suit against Wyeth.

The Wyeth case is one of several in which a different administration might have taken another position, said Carter Phillips, a lawyer at Sidley Austin in Washington who often argues before the Supreme Court. Although the case probably won't be decided until after the Jan. 20 inauguration, the Nov. 3 argument date effectively precludes a new administration from switching sides, he said.

``All the current granted cases will be argued too soon'' to be affected by the next administration, Phillips said.

Obama Administration

One possibility is that an Obama administration might try more subtly to influence the outcome through a change in the FDA's position, according to David Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor who advocates allowing patient lawsuits.

``It would not take very much for an agency simply to say, `We've reconsidered,''' Vladeck said.

Garre and the Bush administration are taking a middle-ground position in a high court fight over smoker claims that tobacco companies fraudulently portray ``lights'' as safer than other cigarettes. Much like Wyeth, tobacco company Altria Group Inc. argues that federal law preempts those lawsuits.

The administration is opposing one of two Altria arguments: the company's contention that the Federal Trade Commission's oversight of cigarette testing shields companies from suit. Garre doesn't take a position on Altria's separate claim that a federal cigarette labeling law precludes smoker suits. The Oct. 6 argument will be the first of the term.

The administration is opposing business in two other high- profile fights. In one, Garre is defending a Federal Communications Commission rule that would subject broadcasters to fines for ``fleeting expletives'' on live television. That case comes before the court on Election Day, Nov. 4.

Job Discrimination

In the other case, the court on Oct. 8 will consider whether a federal job-discrimination law protects workers from retaliation after they cooperate with an internal investigation into sexual harassment allegations.

Clement, speaking last week at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce preview of the court's term, suggested he expected business advocates to lose the retaliation case.

``It's hard for me to believe that Congress would not have wanted to protect individuals in those circumstances,'' he said.

The potential blockbuster of the term is a terrorism case that the next president probably will have a chance to shape. The court last month received an appeal from an accused al-Qaeda operative who was arrested in the U.S. in 2001 and is being detained in a military prison.

Deciding how to handle that case is one of a slew of terrorism-related legal questions that the next administration will have to answer almost immediately at various levels of the court system, said Georgetown law professor Martin Lederman.

``Come January, a lot of decisions will have to be made by a new administration quite rapidly,'' he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 1, 2008 00:01 EDT