This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 5th, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Free Speech, School Choice, and other big issues will be front and center for the new term of the Supreme Court,

but this will be a lighter term, at least if cases so far granted a hearing are any guide.

So says Ilia Shapiro, editor of Cato's Supreme Court review.

Despite high so high profile decisions,

the last term of the court produced relatively few dissents.

Is there any reason why that is?

Docket selection, you know, they take cases that don't make the front pages of the newspapers

but are very important, but the court seems to agree on those technical issues of

statutory interpretation and the bankruptcy code say or some business

regulation or something like this or They're just not controversial cases.

And when there is dissent, it's not ideological.

It's just different interpretations of technical law.

And does this keep the trend of the Robert's sort of house cleaning court of taking

care of things that probably ought to be cleared up? I think so. You know on the

other hand it's just an indication of how much how many dumb laws there are out there for the court to

you know unanimously or near the unanimously reverse or government abuses in terms of how they treat people at trial or convicts after trial or what have you,

that the court has to clean up, as you said.

Now one of the high profile cases that the court will be hearing deals with the famous Phelps family

and they're famous primarily for being jerks at sensitive events and protesting. This is a free speech challenge coming to

the high court. What is the challenge here?

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