Every judge claims impartiality, that he or she renders decisions based on the facts in the cast at hand, but Supreme Court justices are in a particular spotlight, both today and in terms of their historical legacy.

Richard Hasen, professor of Law and Political Science at University of California, Irvine school of Law and author now of The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown, talks about voting in the aftermath of the storm and how damage could change election turnout. 

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court vacated a ruling earlier this summer that had upheld the state’s Voter ID law. On this week’s Backstory, Richard Hasen, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California Irvine School of Law, talks about how Pennsylvania is just the latest state where Voter ID laws are being challenged or struck down. And we’ll find out what that means for the election in November.

The 2000 election exposed the fragile state of the American voting system, but it's unclear how much has changed since the Bush v. Gore controversy 12 years ago. Rick Hasen says that result has been a confusing patchwork of election laws. "It's a myth to think that we have a single, national election on election day," he says. "When it comes to the election of the president, we have 13,000 separate elections."

Richard Hasen, law professor at Loyola Law School and author of the "Election Law Blog", discusses the ousting of three controversial judges who ruled in favor of gay marriage in Iowa and what it signals to other judges nationwide.