out of indiana came the supreme court case where that noted right winger, justice john paul stevens, in a 6-3 majority, said that voter i.d. laws are perfectly constitutional. the point of the voting rights act is to keep states operating constitutionally. clearly, in my view, doj has overreached its voting rights act authority in rejecting south carolina, texas. i do not know of george it is in on that as well -- if georgia is in that as well. their voter i.d. laws. that will get litigated, and d.o.j. i expect to lose. >> have you looked into how different or similar it is? >> it is different. for example, while south carolina requires a set of i.d.'s with a photo, and they will bring a bus to your house if you can't travel. they have free ones and all those things. they have brought down the barriers extraordinarily. virginia is a little bit different. we will let you use a utility bill with your address, it is the same as your address on the voter rolls. if someone is going to cheat and fraudulently vote, how are they going to get a utility bill? it raises a major hurdle on the fr

joined now by robert shapiro, professor of law at emory university and a former clerk to justice john paul stevens thank you for coming in. >> morning. >> 90 minutes this morning, three lawyers talking about whether the supreme court should even hear this case. that may seem kind of strange to civilians like us. so in laymen's terms, what's today all about? >> today is a threshold issue. under the health care law, eventually everyone's going to have to buy health insurance or pay a fee and that's really the center of the challenge. but usually when the government's requiring to pay you a fee or a tax, you have to pay it first and then challenge it later because the government wants to keep its budgets full and doesn't like people challenging before they pay. well, here no one has to pay until 2014. so the question is, is this a kind of tax that you have to pay first before you can challenge or is this the kind of thing you can challenge right away? >> it's actually the one part of this where both sides agree, they want to get this done now. let's tomorrow tomorrow, whether the individual mandate i

in april of 2010, just before he retired from the supreme court, justice john paul stevens did an interview in his chambers with a reporter for the new york times, and at the age of 90, on the eve of his retirement, justice stevens said when he looked back at his career, when he looked back at every one supreme court justice who joined the court in the previous generation, in the previous 35 years, he told the reporter every single one of them was more conservative than the justice he or she replaced. with only two possible exceptions, over 35 years. think about that for a second. when a republican president replaced justices on the supreme court, they picked judges further to the right than the judges that were being replaced. also, when democrats picked new justices for the supreme court, over the past 35 years, the justice arriving was almost always more conservative than the justice who had been there before. this doesn't mean that democrats always pick hard core right wingers, but overall, over time it has been a steady, deliberate march to the right on the supreme court. evidence even

both of the vacancies that these two nominees were filling, a vacancy left by david souter and john paul stevens these were not game changers. the ideological balance of those two vacancies was not going to change. but one of these days it will. who's going to leave the court and in what order? i mean, eventually, all nine of the current ones will leave, but i have no idea in what order or when. but at a certain point a justice who holds a central position on the court, letting that nomination be a game changer, that will happen. it happened in 1987 when louis powell retired, and he was the swing justice of his day, and we had the bork battle, the titanic battle that in many respects is still going on today. it really never ended, and it kind of informs how we, how we think about the nomination process. and so i just -- given what's happened in the last couple years, i just personally, you know, hate to think about the conflagration that's going to occur when that vacancy occurs. i'll just say another word about the still-resonating bork battle. and, again, recent political events, i think, shou

in a former opinion within by john paul stevens they upheld a very similar law, almost the exact same6-3 with justice stevens writing the opinion. he's been replaced bee justice kagan, but there are still five votes on the court for these kind of laws. the best argument right there is the supreme court has recently said these laws are okay if you take the safeguards that texas did. bill: based on previous legislation, states in the south like texas have a different burden of proof and all this. i think it's fascinating when you compare the southern states and northern states. chuck, make your best case for why you think the justice department has a shot at this. >> i'd like to look at it from the local view. i was born and raised in east texas. i was a local precinct judge in east texas and ran local elections in my precinct for ten years. working with the community, seeing the checks and balances that we have in place and running elections there and seeing that the process did work you had to register to vote, you brought your voter registration card in we checked you off on a list a

john paul stevens wrote that one with. megyn?eral member of the high court at the time. gregg, thank you. well, joining me now for more on this, julian epstein, you know who these guys are -- they were just with us. jay allen seculo as well. this is right in your wheelhouse, we thought we'd hold you over since we can't think of two guys we'd like to hear more on this. the supreme court upheld voter id laws in indiana, but now the doj has challenged those laws in south carolina and, now, texas. jay, why, why -- no, let me start with julian. why is the doj doing this? >> let him defend, okay. >> yeah, okay, fine. [laughter] i think for two reasons. one is voter impersonation is a problem that just doesn't exist in this country. it's been studied in the kansas, ohio, all around the country. the advocates of voter identification laws have never put forward any evidence that voter impersonation occurs on any substantial scale whatsoever. section five of the voting rights act requires when the a state puts in place a law effecting voti

adopt such a law, and it was a 6-3 decision holding up the law as written by the liberal justice john paul stevense state, obviously, has a very important interest in insuring the security of elections. and this just seems the most basic security measure you can take, just asking people to prove who they are when they show up at the polls. jon: the american civil liberties union, as you might expect, disagrees with you. they say that among other things obtaining a photo id presents a substantial and unnecessary barrier for many of our nation's citizens. >> it just strikes me as absurd. anyone can get a photo id. it's a perfectly easy, um, texas is going to provide for free an election identification document for anyone who wants one. the states have adopted these laws, they've seen no downturn in turnout whatsoever. georgia has a law that the justice department approved in 2005, and the first presidential election with this law in place was in 2008, minority turnout in georgia -- according to the heritage foundation -- was actually up more than it was this mississippi which didn't have one of thes

at a vote of 6-3 and the most liberal judge on the panel, john paul stevens wrote the majority opinion differently. >> true. >> texas is a unique situation because there's proximity in mexico. i guess that's the -- that's the deal. >> it should be clarified, though. >> all right. we'll continue to debate that. let us know what you think about it. you can e-mail or twitter us. take a look at these incredible live pictures coming from heartsville jackson atlanta airport right now where a delta plane just rolled off the runway. a delta spokesperson says mechanics were testing the engines of the boeing 737 when they experienced some type of problem with the braking system when the plane veered off the taxiway, no passengers on board at the time. we're told there is significant damage, though, to the plane. and no flights so far have been affected. new video just into "fox & friends" showing the first protests since the killing of 16 civilians in afghanistan. hundreds of students there now calling for the public trial of the 38-year-old american soldier accused of carrying out that vicious