states finished its year with a bang as it has in recent years with decisions in the hobby lobby case and in organized labor case involving mandatory dues. but there were other cases: about internet privacy, fourth amendment restrictions on unreasonable search and seizure, aero, a service that sentence recorded programs to customers was more or less put out of business by the high court. yes, there were hotly con testified 5-4 decisions, strongly worded majority opinions and brist ling dissents, but the court also had the most unanimous decisions since john roberts became chief justice. we'll look back at the term that was this time on "inside story." the court saved the most closely watched case until the final monday of the term in burwell versus hobby lobby, the justices ruled 5-4 that employers cannot be forced to provide obamacare mandated contraceptives to female employees if it goes against their religious beliefs. >> today's decision is a landmark decision for religious freedom. the supreme court -- the supreme court recognized that american families do not lose their fundamental rights when they open a family business. >> this case was decided along ideological lines. just as samuel alito wrote for the majority in the decision, he said, protecting the free exercise rights of closely held corporations thus protection the religious liberty of the humans who own and control them. hobby lobby was one of 5 major cases that weren't 5-4 with the conservative majority. another ruling: mccutchin versus the if he hfederal elect commission blew apart limits of campaign contributions made by individuals. the court ruled certain donation caps violate donors' freedom of speech. conservative justices agreed. liberal justices did not. in his dissentence steven briar concluded that the opinion eviscrates our nation's campaign finance laws and where money calls the tune, the voices of the people will not be heard. a cynical public can lose interest in political participation all together. argues sat with the plaintiff, sean mccutcheon the day he argued his case. >> what do you think the impact will be if the supreme court does rule in your favor? >> i think it would be a positive impact because, again, we could donate to more candidates and committees, especially challengers and people that have difficulty raising money. so, i think we could get some new ideas and new people into the process, which is positive, but it is going to cost more money to do that, but i don't see any wrong with hiring more staff and doing more business. >> in this term, the court cannot be seen as overtly ideological. in fact, 65% of the time, the court ruled unanimously. >> that's the most since 1953. one such case was noil canning versus the national labor relations board. in a major test of power, the court found the president can't make appointments when the make appointments when the senate is in proforma session. >> it represents a clear, clear rebuke to the president's brazen power grab. >> another unanimous decision: riley versus california. the court ruled that in order to search the cell phones of suspected criminals, police need to obtain a warrant. but in other cases, some justices swapped ideological sides such as the ruling in abc versus aero in a 6-3 decision, the court decided the internet startup infringed on copy right laws when it captured t.v. broadcast signals and distributed them through the web to subscribers. no case, chief justice john roberts and anthony kennedy joined the liberals' wing. now aereo's future is uncertain. this session was a mix. how is the chief justice of the united states, john roberts, molding this court? does this session say more about his leadership, the specific legal issues in cases heard or both? . >> there is a tendency, perhaps unfortunate, to use big, broad labels. liberal, conservative, when discussing the work of the high court. take a second look. the three women justices, soto mayero cagin were closer to each other in votes in the last term than this one. justice kennedy often spoken of as the swing justice is closer to the quartet than he is to breyer, cagin and societomayor. amanda frost, a professor at american university school of law to jinder singh who argued before the court and trevor burris, a research fellow at the center for constitutional studies at the cato institute. welcome. i want to begin by having you identify for your own self the case of the term, what got your attention, what was assign post for you about what this court is like and how it works. amanda frost? >> well, for me, the case of this term was nlrb versus canning, the recess appointments case you mentioned at the beginning of this segment. i picked that case for a couple of reasons. first, it's a very important case about the president's power to make recess appointments and it was a rebuke, not of, i would say, this particular president, but presidents generally who had been using the recess appointments clause very broadly to bypass the senate confirmation process. a second reason i picked that case as a good example of this term is that it's damage example offun animity. but nottun animity in r.n.ing. it differs as to how they would approach a case. this nlb versus canning decision is a good example of that. there were four justices who con kurd who would have gone much farther than the 5 in the majority in terms of limiting the president's power to use the recess appointments clause. >> we will talk later in the program about what it takes t get a unanimous decision and how horse trading goes on behind the seeds. trevor burris? >> i think the biggest case that's going to have the biggest effect will be the riley cell phone search case. >> case is going to affect people. it already is affecting people, normal people dealing with police right now. it was useful that the justices who were often flumoxed by technology because they maybe don't understand new technologies all had i assume smart phones. so they understand how important your digital life is to your concept of your person. the language in that case is going to be used in every digital case going forward. there is a lot more we have to decide about where you have privacy in the cloud, for example, so google holds your e-mail. but the language is so big on saying that this is -- there is more in your cell phone than getting a strip search. they could find out so many things about you. so we have this language going forward and i think the ramifications of that decision is going to be just a tent post of future fourth amendment protection for our digital life. >> they are as a group much older than the average american. and though this may not be so tech-saavy, in the opinion, they compared it to other things that people are very familiar with you have to do that in fourth amendment. how is this like a penr pin register. they say privacy is what matters? >> jinder sing ? >> mccutcheon versus fcc. dissentence. he points out it could be seen as quite narrow but really, the reasoning of the case changes the conception of what the government's interest is in campaign finance, and by doing so, it opens the door to, you know, striking down many more important campaign finance regulations. i think that that's been a hallmark of the way this court has approached cases. they take a narrow approach to the issue before them but embedded in the reasoning is some justification to rule far more broadly down the road. >> down the road, using that decision as an anchor for more sweeping rulings on the state of the law? >> absolutely. >> that's exactly right. >> now, when we see a case like hobby lobby go to the last day of the term, what does that mean about behind the scenes? amanda frost? >> it means there is some rig writing and rewriting going on. a 5 to 4. there was a need of the majority to respond and there to be a back and forth and that will take longer than if there is one majorityom opinion that everyone is signing on to. it's a construct of something the court has created for itself which is a summer break. so, you know, conceivably they could issue decisions in july but they had places to be. door. >> now, looking at it from the outside. l, i think if you polled the justices after they walked out of the argument, you probably would have got edge 5-4. why does it have to go all the way to the end of the term? >> yeah. i think a couple of things were going on there. one is that the result is sort of the least of it. and this goes back to tejinder's comment. they are not looking to render a decision in the case. they are issuing decisions with reasoning that will guide litigants and courts and public policy decision makers, congress going forward. so they need to be very clear in their reasoning. and they also need to lay their groundwork for the positions they want to make going forward. >> was this someplace new tejinder that the free exercise rights of a person whether it is to wear headgear like yours as a member of the military, we think of free exercise as adhering to the individual. this extended it to a company. >> it did. i want to qualify that in one respect which was this was not a con at this timetutional. it was about the religious freedom restoration act. but this doesn't change constitutional law about freedom of religion. >> is that a distinction without a difference when they play this out over the coming years? >> i wouldn't go that far. i think there is a tendency for those who are opposed to the decision to stoort of throw up their fans and say the plan has changed and that often becomes self-fulfilling profess. the example, the other way, i think is when justice scalia wrote his decision in the united states versus windsor saying this is going to cause every state marriage ban to be overturned. >> that's what's happening. if you over read the majority opinions in case like hobby lobby, you really run the risk of creating the very sort of broad expansion of the free exercise clause that, you know, wasn't necessarily part of the majority. >> so trevor burris, you can't use hobby lobby to play out scenarios where believers in different religions might deny employees all sorts of things? >> there is more of an ability to do that now. we are talking about the court applying a 20-year-old statute that was passed by a nearly unanimous congress. there wasn't an excurs. they were doing what congress told them to do. for the business question, the way we see it, more the way cato or alito sees it is it still the rights of the people through the corporation that are being protected. the corporation, it's more of that reasoning which is what we wrote our brief about, when the green family or the hahns or menonits or conastoga lumber, both of them, their religious beliefs are being infringed upon. the way you can think about that is imagine a mormon running a single proprietorship and there is a law that says you have to carry alcohol. he doesn't want to do it. it's his beliefs that are infringed upon. there is a trio. corporation, no different. it's still people's beliefs. >> we are going to take a short break. when we come back, we will talk about thounanimous decisions. how does that work behind the scenes? what do you have to give away to get everybody on board? this is "inside story." stay with us. >> tomorrow. >> i know that i'm being surveilled. >> freedom at risk. >> your agency deceived the american people. >> tracking every move. >> the nsa's actually doing this on a universal scale. >> could you be next? >> if helping kids with their homework is terrorism activity, then... i guess so. >> faultlines. al jazeera america's hard hitting, >> they're blocking the door... >> groundbreaking, >> we have to get out of here... >> truth seeking, award winning, investigative documentary series: "collect it all". tomorrow, 7 eastern. only on al jazeera america. >> al jazeera america presents >> we all live for the moment that's all i'm trying to do 15 stories, 1 incredible journey >> edge of eighteen coming september only on al jazeera america welcome back to "inside story" on al jazeera america. i am ray suarez. we are reviewing the just-wrapped supreme court term. i want to talk more about the unanimous decisions, the most since john roberts became chief justice. tejinder is this compromise being achieved at the cost of far-reaching decisions? if there were more 5-4s, more very tightly decided cases, would we see rule making that was more broad? >> i think there is certainly a chance we would. one very good example of that, i think, is the abortion buffer zone's case. no case, they actually do strike down massachusetts's law creating the buffer zone, but the grounds on which its done, you know, the court doesn't apply strict scrutiny to those types of laws and it really gives the states a chance to go back and try again. that was an opinion by the chief justice with the more liberal members of the court joining it and the four more conservative members of the court wrote con currencies s saying we can go farther. let's go farther. i think there has been, you know, the case would be regarded appropriately, i think, as unanimous because everyone case. but i think that in order to get that unaniminty, a 5-4 with the liberals dissentencing. >> trevor wood, do you agree we would have seen in many of these cases yet a signal from the con currencies of where individual justices really wanted to go? >> absolutely. and there is, you see justice thomas fors years has written concurring opinions that said he would go way further than the majority would go and with you are trying to get that extra 5th vote, though, you might just need to give away, if that's the right word for it, give away a little thing that narrows the ruling a little bit more, makes make sure you put a paragraph in that says, this doesn't apply to x, y, and z and it may be you can get kennedy's vogt or sotomayor's vote. in the unanimous cases, this foe faux fauxunamity cases. a lot are boring to most people and even to me. decisions. >> don't say that. >> about erisa and bankruptcy law that don't have an ideological component. so that makes up a bunch of the unanimous decisions. >> amanda frost, how does that work in mechanics? are there clerks shuttling back and forth between the office with newly written paragraphs flavor? >> yeah. i think that's really some interesting information we have gotten about the court over the years is that thing actually don't speak to each other that often. they communicate regarding writing. major are personable but i think they are being cautious and careful to write that opinion to make sure the reason something sound from their view and share it with each other and modify and change as need be. and i think chief justice roberts said in his hearing, he wanted to bring the court together. he did not succeed for many years. this may be an outlier year or we may see a new trend. >> do we see the emergence of a roberts style now that you can really identify given the auk of several years now? >> i do think that he and i think the other justices as well are disturbed by some of the media stories over the last few years about how this court is the first court to be divided by the political party that appointed them. so when they split 5-4, they usually do along lines of which havevan democrat appointees. i think that was disturbing because it makes the court look political and the court is political but they don't want the public to think that's all they are. they think they are more than that. i think by trying to issue these unanimous decisions they are trying to show the public that. >> are they more than that? when i looked at the 9 heads and who con concerned with who, there is a cluster at the left of the graphic consisting of the three women, justice briar, allegations to their right and probably mostly until business cases because he has a background there the farmed quartet on the right side of the graphic. all appointed predictably by the parties you would expect. >> it is not political. i do not ever. i agree with the five a lot in the 5-4 decisions but i don't ever attack the 4 for being political. i think that they have juris prudential principles that are different from the other five. i think what we are seeing is sort of coming to a head of a split in juris prudence for the last 50. the federal society came up in the early '80s and pushed a different. original naturalist thinking. they are both principles of deciding cases and then the presidents who choose them choose on those principles. we will see more divisions like this. i don't see it going away any time soon. >> no more david suders? >> i think there is a tension. steppedency to move toward the middle after they are appointed. they move a little bit, i think, because most of the cases the supreme court decides, even the boring ones can be quite hard and once you have the benefit of advanced briefing by both sides and all of the amicus groups coming in and a dialogue, i think you see a little bit of movement by justices and i think that's clearly what happened in the case of justice suter with harry blackman before him. it could happen again. it's not predictable it would be necessarily a republican moving left or a democrat moving right as well. >> given what you just said, we are going to take a short break. when we come back, we will talk about who surprised you this time around. were there con currencies? were there lead writers on opinions who you said, hmm. i wouldn't have predicted that? this is "inside story." stay with us. >> on tech know, an amazing new species is discovered... >> kind of like we're watching little architects in action >> one of natures mysteries solved... >> i don't think it's a spider or mite >> in the amazon rainforest >> we're gonna try to get one in the act of actually making the structure >> tech know, every saturday go where science meets humanity. >> this is some of the best driving i've every done, even though i can't see. >> tech know. >> we're here in the vortex. only on al jazeera america. ica , available for your apple and android mobile device. download it now you are watching "inside story" on al jazeera america. i am ray suarez. the current bench on america's high court has been together four years now with the addition of elana cagan. is there such a thing now as a roberts court? is there a style of decision making? a model of collegiality that gives the court a personality in the way the people talked about the warren court the berger court, the rehnquist court? amand appear frost, tejinder singh and trevor burris, a research fellow at the center for constitutional studies at the cato institute. trevor, let me start with you. is there an identifiable thing that you can put your thing on court? >> roberts, himself, has done a good job of doing what he said he would do, which is go for narrow decisions. when he doesn't write a narrow decision, he wants to write the big decisions. when he doesn't write a narrow one, he likes to explain himself why he doesn't want to write one. i think the reality of perception is going to be that the roberts court redefined by campaign finance cases going forward. mostly that is such a huge issue being discussed and they are always 5-4. the roberts court because warren was accused of being too friendly to criminals. now, that's one thing for warren. for roberts, it's going to be he is too friendly to big money but his style is narrow, trying to be conciliatory, trying to explain himself as best he can. >> amand, same question? >> the roberts court, in addition -- i agree with you about campaign finance, but i think affirmative action will be another place in which chief justice roberts makes an important change in the z juris prudentions. with the decision upholding the amendment to the michigan constitution prohibiting affirmative action. he has the famous line in his opinion about we are going to stop caring about race once we race. >> does it look like there won't be anything of affirmative action by the time the test cases actually get a review from this court? >> it's possible. >> i think it will ends up by constitutional amendment, amendments like they upheld in the michigan case. >> will end up before any court will actually have the gumption to come in and say, no longer. >> tejinder, mashingsz of the roberts court? >> i think what we are seeing and this is consist went my colleagues have said that we are seeing a steady march of the law in the more conservative direction and the way that the court decides cases and decides them ostensibly narrowly would embedded in those opinion that paves the way for a bigger decision in addition to affirmative action, the voting rights act case of last term was tremendous. the way the court did that was it had a case where it said congress, if you don't fix this statute, we might strike it down. congress didn't act because congress didn't act. >> that's not what at the do anymore. the court struck it down. these are the types of moves just justice roberts more than perhaps anyone else is making big changes in the law look reasonable by moving in a manner that many people perceive as incremen incremental. >> when you saw the tallies in case after case after case, were there ones this term that stuck out where he said, that's not where i would have figured justice a or justice z would trevor? >> i was very pleased to see briar write the main opinion in the noel canning case. briar's juris prudence is often effenescent. i know it when i see it. it's hard to predict but he used the reasoning i wrote about that said at the least, the president cannot decide if the senate is in session. i am glad he agreed on that. i am a little bit confused about why he decided three days and 10 days for the length of the recess but generally, i was -- i said, way to go, briar when i saw that. >> i am going to site the same case. i agree but for slightly different reasons. i was surprised and happily sew and the court was serving a classic role in that case of checking the political branches and i think it was serving the role that democrats in the senate should have served more recently. it should be an interest of the senate as an institution whether they are republican or democrat to make sure it plays the confirmation role. the court saw beyond the fact that democrat is president right now and said, we care less about that and more about these institutions of government working the way they are supposed to. i will add the senate is beginning to fix its own problem by changing some of the filibuster rules which is beyond the scope of our conversation but shows that process works. >> that's not coincidental? >> these institutions are inter related and react to each other. >> i miss senator byrd. he would have been angry about that. >> tejinder, any surprises? >> that is the most but i would say the cell phone privacy case. >> was unanimous and chief justice wrote the opinion. you have this really interesting situation where the fourth amendment has taken a beating in the supreme court. it really has and to see the justices come together on, you know, what is actually a very important privacy issue, was heartening and surprising, i think to a lot of observers. >> instead of being opaque, it understand. >> absolutely. >> as some fourth amendment indications are, you wonder where does the individual and where does the car begin? am i a car? whatever. but this really was something you could understand. >> yeah. it was a shockingly bright line and it was surprising that it was unanimous and i think, you know, a breath of fresh air for people who have been worried about the >> . me. >> brings us to the end of this edition of "inside story." thanks for being with us. in washington, i am ray suarez. ♪ pleasantville a small airstrip north of jerusalem. today it's derelict and abandoned. but for years kalandia airport was the gateway to palestine. on the morning of the 17th of september 1948 a white plane carrying u.n. and red cross