Obama and the Supreme Court

President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met with members of the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Obama and Biden are both familiar with the law and the courts. Obama, a former law professor and former president of the Harvard Law Review, has been deeply involved in the law since his days at Harvard. Obama's wife Michelle is also a lawyer with a Harvard Law degree.

Not since Bill and Hillary Clinton occupied the White House have we seen two lawyers as president and first lady. But unlike Clinton, Obama's vice president also brings a wealth of legal knowledge and experience.

Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been involved in the law for years and is well known for his role in the opposition to the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.

The two men are expected to bring a very different legal philosophy to the courts and their appointments than the approach adopted by President Bush, a non-lawyer. Bush appointed Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who welcomed Obama and Biden to the Court on Wednesday.

In the photo above, Obama and Biden are all smiles as they meet with Roberts and his fellow Justices, John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas and David Souter. But after the Inauguration, the high court will play a different role.

During the campaign last summer, Obama staked out a less charitable position about the Republican appointees on the Court. "I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas," Obama told Rick Warren last summer at his presidential forum. "I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the constitution."

Obama also indicated his opposition to conservative Justices Scalia and Roberts, although for different reasons. "I would not have nominated Justice Scalia though I don't think there is any doubt about his intellectual brilliance. Because he and I just disagree," Obama said.

And as for Chief Justice Roberts, whom Obama voted against in the Senate, the candidate last summer had respect for him as a person but disagreed with his legal philosophy.

"John Roberts I have to say was a tougher question only because I find him to be a very compelling person in conversation," Obama said. "He is clearly smart and very thoughtful. I will tell you that how I have seen him operate since he went to the bench confirms the suspicions that I had and the reasons I voted against him... One of the most important jobs of the Supreme Court is to guard against the encroachment of the Executive Branch on the power of the other branches. And I think he has been a little bit too willing or eager to give an administration whether it is mine or George Bush's more power than I think the constitution originally intended."

It's not clear if any of those campaign conversations resurfaced on Wednesday, but the Court has a unique role to play. Members of the Court will attend Obama's inauguration next week and his State of the Union speech next month, and they will work with Obama's new appointees to the Court, should he make any.

But they must also play an impartial role as a separate and equal branch of government, deciding disputes that involve the president and his administration. And, as we saw with Bill Clinton, the Chief Justice of the Court ultimately presides over the trial of the president in the case of impeachment.