...that the court was ruling specifically on Federal authority vs State and Local authority in clarification for the lower courts. If that was the case, then it wouldn't matter if the actual law being debated in the lower courts was Freedom of Speech or a law on Turnip regulation, at least as far as the legal implications went.

I could have been wrong on that count, but either way, what I was commenting on is the politicized nature of the current Court, with justices all but hard-wired to vote by party. The whole point of life-long terms for SCOTUS judges was to avoid that kind of thing, and it annoys the crap out of me.