July 2 (Bloomberg) -- The Connecticut firefighter case resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court this week showed the power of the court’s conservative wing to reshape the law. The rest of the nine-month term underscored the limits of that power.

The 5-4 decision backing white New Haven firefighters who claimed race discrimination was perhaps the session’s most prominent ruling, in part because it rejected the reasoning of high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. It followed victories for Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservatives in criminal and environmental cases.

The court’s liberals, led by Justice John Paul Stevens, managed to thwart Roberts in other significant cases, at times defying predictions by legal analysts. Stevens was in the majority in 5-4 decisions that allowed suits by consumers over prescription drugs and so-called light cigarettes, forced judges to withdraw from cases involving large campaign contributors and let states enforce fair-housing laws against banks.

“I think John Paul Stevens is smiling today,” said Roy Englert, a Washington appellate lawyer at Robbins Russell Englert Untereiner & Sauber LLP. “In a lot of the cases he cared about, the so-called liberal wing of the court did pull out the victories.”

Stevens was also in the majority when the court, on an 8-1 vote, left intact the Voting Rights Act and limited strip searches of students at public schools.

Looming Blockbuster

The voting rights case once loomed as the term’s blockbuster. Arguments in April suggested the justices might strike down a central component of the landmark 1965 law: its requirement that eight states and parts of eight others get federal clearance before changing election rules or district lines.

The court avoided the constitutional question by instead letting more jurisdictions seek exemptions from the so-called preclearance requirement. Although the ruling left open the possibility that the court might later strike down the provision, the law’s defenders at least won a reprieve.

“The Voting Rights Act case resolution, I think, took everybody by surprise,” Englert said.

Another top Supreme Court lawyer, Carter Phillips of Sidley Austin LLP in Washington, called the compromise ruling a “minor miracle.”

The term was the last for Justice David Souter, who retired after the court issued its final decisions on June 29. President Barack Obama nominated Sotomayor, 55, to succeed Souter, 69.

Kennedy’s Role

As in previous terms, Justice Anthony Kennedy was the court’s fulcrum, casting majority votes in all but six of the 79 rulings, according to Scotusblog, a Web site run by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.

Republican appointees Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were in the majority more than 80 percent of the time. Each of their more liberal counterparts -- Stevens, Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- was in the majority less than 75 percent of the time.

How one evaluates the term depends in large part on an assessment of which cases were the most consequential. Environmentalists lost all five of their cases, as companies won limits on the Clean Water Act and the Superfund environmental cleanup law.

By contrast, the court made some companies more vulnerable to consumer lawsuits. The court let patients sue drugmakers over inadequate safety warnings, siding with a musician who lost her arm after being injected with an anti-nausea treatment.

Smoker Ruling

The justices also ruled against Philip Morris USA Inc. and other tobacco companies by letting smokers sue over light cigarettes. In both cases, the justices rejected arguments that federal statutes pre-empted state product-liability law.

The court delivered what Robin Conrad of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called a “crushing blow” when the justices left intact a $79.5 million smoker award, dismissing an appeal by Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group Inc. of Richmond, Virginia. Business advocates wanted tougher scrutiny of damage awards.

That dismissal was “probably the biggest disappointment of the term,” said Conrad, executive vice president of the Chamber’s litigation unit.

Accused and convicted criminals had mixed success. The court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution doesn’t guarantee access to DNA evidence for convicted criminals seeking to prove their innocence. By the same vote, the court said prosecutors could use evidence obtained in the search of a man arrested because of a police clerical error.

Familiar Alignment

Those cases divided the court along familiar lines, with Kennedy joining Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas in the majority.

Another criminal case produced a different 5-4 split -- and a victory for the accused. With Scalia and Thomas aligning with Stevens, Ginsburg and Souter, the court said prosecutors can’t use forensic reports at trial unless they put an expert on the stand to explain the contents when the defendant requests the testimony.

Division was a theme in a term that featured 23 votes of 5- 4. That accounted for 29 percent of the court’s rulings, up from 17 percent last year, according to Scotusblog.

“Chief Justice Roberts has not achieved the vision that he testified about in his confirmation hearing of having the court coalesce around opinions,” said David Frederick, a Washington appellate lawyer at Kellogg Huber Hansen Todd Evans & Figel. “It’s not borne out by what happened this year, for sure.”

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

Last Updated: July 2, 2009 00:01 EDT