Prof Susan Estrich saw her old boss, Justice John Paul Stevens, celebrate his 80th birthday recently and, she was glad to note, "his tennis game is still sharp". "For which," she wrote in the Nation, "I am grateful since his good health may be what stands between American women and a major setback for reproductive freedom."
The formal separation of powers of the judicial and legislative arms of US government does not mean that Justice Stevens and his rude health are above politics. Or presidential elections. Very far from it. Indeed, for many lawyers and civil campaigners, from antiabortion activists to champions of gay rights or affirmative action, the Supreme Court is the issue of the elections.
"The next president is going to appoint three, maybe four justices of the Supreme Court," Vice-President Al Gore declared during the first of the presidential TV debates. It is a huge power to shape for an entire generation an institution that arguably does as much to fashion the politics of the US as Congress itself.
And the court is a constant battleground between judicial activists who have created new rights out of the general principles of the Constitution and conservatives determined to set limits to government in any form.
It has nine members, each serving until he or she sees fit to retire, and so Mr Gore cannot know for sure how many nominations he may have in his gift. But with many issues decided on a 54 basis, even the retirement of the court's oldest and probably most liberal member - Justice Stevens - will mean an important shift. Both candidates have made clear they have profoundly different views on potential nominees, Mr Bush promising judges "who will strictly interpret the Constitution", Mr Gore warning of the threat to abortion rights.
The current court under the conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist is finely balanced despite President Reagan's determination to leave his mark, particularly with the nominations of Justices Anthony Scalia and Clarence Thomas, seen by many as among the most conservative judges ever appointed.
And, ironically, the court would already be radically conservative if Mr Bush's father had not taken the advice of his chief of staff in appointing the largely unknown Judge David Souter, who turned out to be a closet liberal.
Undoubtedly the closest scrutiny of new nominees will focus on their views on abortion and the landmark Roe v Wade decision whose principles were upheld again this year by the court in a challenge to Nebraska's late abortion ban. But the majority was only 5-4 and the issue is certain to come to the court again.
The court's view of campaign finance reform is also delicately balanced between those who oppose any limitations on free speech and those who argue that complete freedom for those with money swamps that very freedom for those without. Advocates of affirmative action, gun control, and the right to strike are also deeply worried by the possibility of a Scalia-Thomas dominated court. And with 3,600 people on death row, mainly African-Americans, the Rehnquist court has allowed the execution of mentally retarded children, disregarded "minor" legal improprieties, and acquiesced in the executions of people whose legal representation was shown to be inadequate.
While neither Mr Bush nor Mr Gore is likely to appoint judges who would find executions unconstitutional, the two Clinton nominees, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, have at least shown a willingness to impose restrictions on the way states impose the death penalty.
Voting on the issue in the different forms it has come before the court has oscillated, usually on a 5-4 basis. And Justice Stevens has been one of those willing to insist on rights of the accused to adequate representation.
The court has also been involved in what to some lawyers and political scientists is an even more significant battleground and one familiar to students of the EU no less than the US.
Judicial activism, led by the Chief Justice, has begun to curtail the prerogatives of the federal government in favour of the states by interpreting the 10th Amendment to the Constitution more literally than at any time since the battles between the court and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution. . .are reserved to the states," the amendment says, but the federal government, like Brussels, has over the years used loose interpretations of its right to regulate trade between states to extend its influence into a huge range of policy areas.
In the last five years, however, the court has struck down some 25 pieces of federal legislation. Among those decisions is one denying the Food and Drug Administration a legal competence in regulating tobacco at state level, a ruling remarkably similar in rationale to that of the European Court of Justice recently in striking down Mr Padraig Flynn's curbs on tobacco advertising.
Congress has also been told it is not able to give senior citizens the right to sue the state of Florida over age discrimination or enact legislation on violence against women. . .
"This election, for better or worse, will determine whether or not the premise of the New Deal - that federal power is essentially unlimited - will remain in force in the 21st century," Prof Jeffrey Rosen, of George Washington University, has argued. He believes that such a threat to Washington's power is far more real than that to, say, abortion rights, where a complete aboutface by the court is unlikely.
And for the Democrats the problem is that they don't only need to win the presidency to make their mark on the court.
The powerful Senate Judiciary Committee is still under Republican control and Senator Orin Hatch will also have his say, delaying or blocking liberal nominees both to the Supreme Court and to the lower federal appellate courts. One Hispanic-American appellate judge was last year confirmed only after a four-year wait.
Anyone for tennis?