In decisions ranging from church-state relations to civil rights, the Supreme Court's 1992-93 term offered new proof of its slow but steady move to the political right.
The court relaxed the required separation between government and religion, and dealt civil rights proponents two key defeats.In those decisions and most others, the court's most conservative members prevailed by attracting one or more votes from the moderate conservatives - Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy and David H. Souter.
And consider that Justice Antonin Scalia, the court's most conservative member, cast only nine dissenting votes in the term's 107 signed decisions.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas, also staunch conservatives, cast just eight and 11 dissenting votes, respectively.
Justices Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, the court's most liberal members, each cast more than 30 dissenting votes.
Kennedy proved the term's most prolific majority-maker. He dissented only six times in those 107 cases. O'Connor and Souter cast 17 and 21 dissenting votes, respectively.
Missing were decisions directly involving abortion, affirmative action or school prayer - explosive issues that had left the court deeply divided in past terms.
"From the public perception, it was kind of a dull term," John Roberts, a Washington lawyer who represented the Bush administration before the high court, said Tuesday. "You didn't have a lot of the hot-button cases."
That may account for a spike in the number 9-0 rulings, up to 47 percent. In comparison, 39 percent of the signed decisions during the court's previous nine-month term yielded unanimous votes.
The court ruled three times that government had treated religion too harshly.
The justices said religious groups must be allowed to use public schools during off hours if other community organizations are given such access, and that a Florida city wrongly discriminated against a religion when it outlawed animal sacrifices during worship services.
The court also said the constitutionally required separation of church and state is not breached if public money is used to provide sign-language interpreters for deaf students in parochial schools.
As it concluded the term Monday, the court called into question the reach of the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights law blacks and Hispanics credit for major representational gains in Congress and state legislatures.
The court said congressional districts that appear to have been created based only on race, even when drawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act, are subject to constitutional attacks by white voters.
In another major civil rights ruling, the court made it significantly more difficult for employees to prove they were victims of illegal on-the-job bias.
Justice Byron R. White retired Monday to end his 31-year high court tenure, and President Clinton has nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a federal appellate judge, to replace him.
Many legal experts believe her joining the court would make it slightly less conservative.