CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: It was an also all-over-the-lot day for the high court as they handed down opinions in a series of controversial cases. In a unanimous decision, the court struck down the Rhode Island ban on liquor advertising aimed at promoting sobriety. Also, in an eight to one decision, the court ruled against five black defendants on the issue of racial disparity in a California crack cocaine case, and finally the court refused to review Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczinsky’s appeal for fast action to avoid prosecution. For more on these cases, we turn to NewsHour regular Stuart Taylor, a correspondent for the "American Lawyer" and "Legal Times." Stuart, thank you for coming tonight. Tell us first about the 44 Liquor Mart vs. Rhode Island case. What was it all about?

STUART TAYLOR, The American Lawyer: Rhode Island had a law that bans all price advertising of liquor, except in the store itself. You can’t advertise in a newspaper, on a billboard, for an example, and the issue in the Supreme Court was whether that violates the First Amendment, freedom of speech, and the court was unanimous in holding that it did, although it took them four separate opinions in order to explain all the differences in their analysis, and that confuses the process of figuring out what this means for other laws and future laws and for such matters as the Clinton administration’s proposed limits on cigarette advertising, for example.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So what are you saying, that this is not dispositive in terms of that–in terms of the cigarette advertising?