Supreme Court justices emerge as possible players in upcoming presidential election

Also in the news, President Obama talks about the health law while on the campaign trail, Vice President Joe Biden takes on GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and health law supporters begin to embrace the term "Obamacare."

The Hill: Obama, Running Against Congress, Could Find A New Foe In The Supreme Court
President Obama might be campaigning this summer not just against the GOP nominee and congressional Republicans but also the Supreme Court. Obama faces a bigger and more direct threat from the court than any candidate in recent history. The justices are expected to rule in June on whether his signature health care law is constitutional, and oral arguments this week indicated there's a good chance they will strike down at least part of the law: the mandate to have insurance (Baker, 3/30).

NPR: Health Care Ruling Could Impact Presidential Race
The health care case and other high profile Supreme Court rulings expected in June suggest that the justices may become a bigger part of this year's presidential race than the court has been in decades (Shapiro, 3/30).

Politico Pro: Obama Pitches ACA, But Not SCOTUS
President Barack Obama is back to giving his standard pitch for the health reform law -- but he's leaving the Supreme Court alone for now. Campaigning in Burlington, Vt., on Friday, Obama said nothing about the surprisingly tough questions the health care law got from the justices this week -- or the signs that the law is in more trouble with the court than most legal observers had predicted. Instead, he stuck to the selling points he usually uses with friendly audiences: The health care law has already brought crucial benefits, and Republicans would turn back the clock if they win the White House (Nather, 3/30).

Los Angeles Times: Biden: Romney 'Out Of Touch' With The Middle Class
[Biden] attacked Romney and the GOP broadly for only staking out a position against what the Obama administration has done, and not offering an alternative. Biden used the healthcare reform law as an example. "What is the Romney answer? There's nothing. All they argue is cut, get rid of that," he said. Biden said that there are "millions of people" benefiting from the law already, and that he was confident the Supreme Court would uphold it when it rules in June (Memoli, 4/1).

NPR: 'Obamacare' Sounds Different When Supporters Say It
Until recently, "Obamacare" was a word mostly used by opponents of President Obama's health care law. Now, supporters of the law are attempting to claim it as their own. During the three days of health care hearings, protesters outside of the Supreme Court in favor of the law returned to one chant more than any other: "We love Obamacare." The phrase was not somebody's impromptu brainstorm on the steps of the Supreme Court. People carried mass-printed black-and-yellow signs that said it in big, bold letters (Shapiro, 3/31).