The court has limited unions’ political power, reduced workers’ bargaining rights, blocked class-action lawsuits against corporate wrongdoers, strengthened fossil fuel companies’ power and emboldened big money interests to buy elections. While Roberts’ break with conservatives on a few cases have led liberals to see him as a sensible moderate, he has presided over a radical court that has helped transform the economy. ‘The John Roberts court has been defined by its allegiance to big business.’ Photograph: Leah Millis/AP That is the highest rate of corporate loyalty of any supreme court in 40 years, and it is a bipartisan affair: Republican-appointed judges are almost always siding with business interests, and in roughly half the cases, Democratic-appointed justices have been with them, too. According to the Constitutional Accountability Center, 70% of the Roberts court’s rulings in business cases have sided with the US Chamber – the pre-eminent business lobby group in Washington. Indeed, other than the brief controversy over Neil Gorsuch’s ruling in a workers’ rights case, recent confirmation battles have rarely ever homed in on nominees’ views on corporate power.Īnd yet, the Roberts court has been defined by its allegiance to big business. Roberts’ business fealty was not the focus of his court confirmation hearings – and that omission is now standard practice. He had advised the Bush 2000 legal team, he represented corporate clients in private practice and he was considered “the go-to lawyer for the business community”. Back then, corporate groups launched what was their first sophisticated public campaign to install a new jurist on the court – and Roberts was the perfect pick. That was the year that business interests engineered John Roberts’ ascension to supreme court chief justice. These organizations know the supreme court is the place to do exactly that – and they have been wildly successful in stacking the court since 2005. Those groups’ ads and lobbying campaigns may try to focus the public debate on religion and court precedent, but such enormous sums of cash flood into judicial campaigns with one underlying goal: enriching the corporations and plutocrats that are making the donations. Those issues, however, are almost certainly not what is motivating big donors to funnel millions of dollars into groups like the Judicial Crisis Network, the oil magnate Charles Koch’s network and the US Chamber of Commerce in support of Barrett’s nomination. As a judge, she has also written dissenting opinions against limits on gun rights and in favor of a Trump administration rule to try to make it harder for low-income immigrants to enter the United States. She signed an ad criticizing Roe v Wade and she has suggested that a more conservative court could accept state restrictions on abortion clinics. To be sure, Barrett’s record on social issues is extreme and worthy of scrutiny, criticism and organized opposition, especially at a time when crucial precedents may be on the line. And if Barrett is confirmed, those Republican donors will not just get another business-friendly judge – in advance of the 2020 election, they will also get a third justice who worked directly on the legal team that convinced the US supreme court to hand Republicans the presidency in 2000. ![]() ![]() ![]() In other words: Republican politicians rely on conflagrations over political process and social issues to mobilize their religious base in service of Republican donors’ real objective – smuggling corporate cronies on to the highest court in the land.
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