The SCOTUS Consistently Rules For Business Over the Individual

                    

               
Our position about the Robert’s SCOTUS will not come as news to any reader of the TPI.  The Court is decidedly conservative in its rulings with favorable rulings for business disproportionate to rulings for citizens (plantiffs) who are able to have their cases accepted by the SCOTUS.   Decisions critical to conservative America have been favorable, with a recent exception for LGBT Rights cases and the ruling which validated the Affordable Care Act as constitutional.  Decisions in the realm of Civil Rights are serious “crap shoots” whenever they reach the Court. We also feel the Court will strike down Affirmative Programs with the very first opportunity via a case that allows for sweeping interpretation and judicial activism.  Social conservatism is without doubt safe under the robes of Robert’s, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy.  As stated at the beginning of this piece, the real benefactor of the Robert’s Court is “big business.”

The US Chamber of Commerce is undeniably a conservative shell of chapters in every major city in the nation.  In fact, the Chamber of  Commerce has as many as 3000 chapters “well planted” across the nation.  Answers Encyclopedia provides data about the extent to which the conservative organization fissures across the nation and the world. 

Answers. encyclopedia. com 

Question: How many members does the chamber of commerce have in the United States?

Answer: Its membership includes 3 million companies, 3,000 state and local chapters, and 830 business associations; American chambers are located in 82 foreign countries, and those of other countries have offices in the United States.

How has the Chamber faired via the Robert’s Court?

The Constitutional Accountability Center

NOT SO RISKY BUSINESS: THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE’S QUIET SUCCESS BEFORE THE ROBERTS COURT – AN EARLY REPORT FOR 2012-2013

The Supreme Court’s support of the Chamber Of Commerce has also increased under the current Supreme Court, according to a report by liberal judicial group the Constitutional Accountability Center. The chamber has won almost 70 percent of the cases it has gotten involved with during the Roberts Court. This compares to the chamber’s 56 percent success rate during the Rehnquist court from 1994 to 2005.

The Chamber and the Roberts Court: An Update All told, the Chamber of Commerce has filed a whopping 18 amicus briefs this Term – just below its record number of 21 in October Term 2010. Overall, the Court will likely decide 76 cases this Term, meaning that the Chamber will have participated in roughly 24% of the Court’s decided cases. This in itself is an important story. For instance, during the final five years of the Burger Court – just before the first member of the current conservative bloc (Justice Antonin Scalia) assumed his seat – the Justices were hearing twice as many cases (between 153 and 160 per Term) as they are now. At the same time, the Chamber was filing in an average of seven cases per Term, or approximately 4% of the Court’s cases overall. Therefore, even as the Court is now hearing far fewer cases, the Chamber is participating in a greater number of them. Over the past thirty years, the Chamber’s participation rate has increased six-fold, from 4% in the early 1980s to 24% today. This dramatic increase in participation is a reflection, in part, of the Chamber’s success in shaping the Court’s docket. As SCOTUS blog reported in early April, the Chamber remains “the country’s preeminent petition-pusher,” as it filed the greatest number of amicus briefs at the cert. stage of any private organization during SCOTUS blog’s three-year study period (running from May 2009 to August 2012).[1] Importantly, the Chamber also has the highest success rate of any of the ten most active organizations during this period – with the Court granting 32% of the Chamber’s cases overall. Therefore, the Chamber is not just participating in cases that the Court decides to hear, but it’s also aggressively and successfully working to shape the Court’s docket.

In May 2013, People For the American Way (PFAW) published a piece that frames a compelling case for a Court unsurpassed in its corporate leanings over a period of the past 65 years. The PFAW used the following verbiage to depict an overwhelming lean in favor of corporations: “…extraordinarily pro-corporate leanings of the current Supreme Court.” 

….The New York Times reported on a new study from the Minnesota Law Review that found that the current Supreme Court’s five conservative justices have sided with corporate interests at a greater rate than most justices since World War II. In fact, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both George W. Bush nominees, are the two most pro-corporate Supreme Court justices to sit in the past 65 years:

Former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration believes the Court is so decided in its GOP ‘lean’ he feels it is a judicial wing of the party. A judicial wing that would find high scorn by the Framers of the US Constitution. 

Reich illustrates his specific point while making a convincing case about the extent the Court has advanced the economic well being of the nation’s top earners. It should be noted the advance has taken place simultaneous to decline (or at least not kept pace with the nation’s top earners) for people in middle America. (see charts below)

Huffington Post 07.02.2013

The Republicans of the Supreme Court

Excerpt 

First, wealthy Republicans have to be able to spend as much money as possible to bribe lawmakers to do their bidding, tell their version of history, and promulgate several big lies (the poor are “takers not makers,” government keeps them “dependent,” the wealthy are “job-creators” so cutting their taxes creates more jobs, unions are bad, regulations reduce economic growth, and so on). 

The five Republicans on the Supreme Court have obliged by eviscerating campaign finance laws. Their 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, along with the broad interpretations given it by several appellate judges (also Republican appointees), has opened the money floodgates. 

Second, wealthy Republicans want to quietly reduce the impact of any laws that might limit their profits, even though they may help struggling whites as consumers or employees. The easiest way to execute this delicate maneuver is to make it harder to sue under such laws. 

Here, too, the five Republicans on the Court have been eager to oblige by tightening requirements for class actions and limiting standing to sue. In their recent Comcast Corp. v. Behrenddecision, for example, they threw out $875 million in damages that a group of Philadelphia-area subscribers had sought from the cable giant, reasoning that the subscriber plaintiffs hadn’t proven they constituted a “class” for the purpose of a class action. 

Third and finally, wealthy Republicans want to minimize the votes of poor and minority citizens — and further propagate the myth that these people are responsible for the economic problems of struggling whites — through state redistricting and gerrymandering, voter-identification requirements at polling stations, and the use of almost any pretext to purge minority voters from voting lists.

Read more

The words and comment take a backstage to a few images of Reich’s point. (images linked to sources). 
 

Over the period of 1970 through the Bush Great Recession (2007-2009), income growth of the nation’s top earners has grown exponentially.  While we cannot make an absolute and all encompassing case that favorable SCOTUS decisions contributed to the deep income and earnings disparity, the data seems to certainly indicate a favorable climate for business and top earners that is beyond coincidence. We posit the favorable legal climate most assuredly contributes when combined with GOP policies that favor the wealthy over the middle and lower income citizens. 

Robert Reich’s piece is yet another poignant screed focused on the dangers of a Supreme Court with overwhelming leaning towards conservative America and Business in general.

We take the point a step farther. We believe the clear inclination away from rights of the individual conjures danger for groups (minorities and women) who often suffer under the stifling and oppressive policies of conservative (corporate) America.