As legislators address a host of futuristic issues, from the genetic enhancement of children to the use of brain scanning to identify criminal suspects, laws will inevitably be challenged in court, raising novel and surprising questions about how to interpret our constitutional rights to privacy, equality and free expression.

Rather than focusing on John Roberts's past, the senators questioning him might get a better sense of his future on the Supreme Court by imagining the issues of the next generation: brain fingerprinting and the future of privacy rights, genetic screening and the future of personal autonomy, DNA and the future of affirmative action, old age and drug legalization, and property, free expression and the right to tinker.