Justices Offer Receptive Ear to Business Interests

[onehandle]

Source: Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Almost 40 years ago, a Virginia lawyer named Lewis F. Powell Jr. warned that the nation’s free enterprise system was under attack. He urged the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to assemble “a highly competent staff of lawyers” and retain outside counsel “of national standing and reputation” to appear before the Supreme Court and advance the interests of American business. “Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court,” he wrote, “the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.” Mr. Powell, who joined the Supreme Court a year later in 1972 and died in 1998, got his wish — and never more so than with the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

The chamber now files briefs in most major business cases. The side it supported in the last term won 13 of 16 cases. Six of those were decided with a majority vote of five justices, and five of those decisions favored the chamber’s side. One of the them was Citizens United, in which the chamber successfully urged the court to guarantee what it called “free corporate speech” by lifting restrictions on campaign spending.

The chamber’s success rate is but one indication of the Roberts court’s leanings on business issues. A new study, prepared for The New York Times by scholars at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, analyzed some 1,450 decisions since 1953. It showed that the percentage of business cases on the Supreme Court docket has grown in the Roberts years, as has the percentage of cases won by business interests.

The Roberts court, which has completed five terms, ruled for business interests 61 percent of the time, compared with 46 percent in the last five years of the court led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who died in 2005, and 42 percent by all courts since 1953.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/us/19roberts.html

---

ACTIVIST JUDGES

-

[OHdem10]

1. There have been several reports and discussions especially

on C-Span which described the Renquist court as promoting
Federalism especially regarding Business Cases. Business
Friendly cour6.

I chalked it up to the changes made by Reagan giving
Business much more power than it had had. You know
Government is the problem, Business is the answer.
Therefore Roberts like Bush(Pres) finishing up the loose
ends and tying it with nice bow. Business Ruldes this
society.

[pmorlan1]

2. Welcome to the plutocracy

Government by the people and for the people just like equal justice under law is just an illusion. I bet Alberto Gonzales would even call that belief quaint.

[DallasNE]

3. And How Many Of Those "Favorable" Cases

Involved the ability of American corporations to outsource jobs, to the detriment of American workers.