Jeffrey Rosen performed an important service this weekend with a pretty thorough accounting of the Supreme Court's increasing kinship with big business. And we're not just the Roberts and Alitos of the world, but the Ginsbergs and Breyers. The Chamber of Commerce, in fact, was the first organization to endorse Breyer. Their imprimatur helped quiet Republican opposition, and Breyer slid through with 87 votes. “Frankly, we didn’t feel like we had anyone on the court since Justice Powell who truly understood business issues,” [said Robin Conrad, head of the Chamber's litigation Department.] “Justice Breyer came close to that.”Of course, Breyer is thought of as a liberal judge, and given the tilt of the Court, he's certainly what passes for a liberal judge at the moment. But that's a function of the Court's swing right on the one hand, and the strange preeminence social issues have in our discussion of the Court on the other. Nominees are evaluated as liberal and conservative based first on their positions on abortion and second on their other positions on abortion and third on their attitudes towards affirmative action. There's really no fourth. But their take on economic issues, on labor regulations, and on corporate oversight are arguably of equal importance, and certainly of enough importance to seriously consider. But either because those cases are hard to explain during a nomination fight or because they're not considered dramatic testimony, the whole of a nominee's economic jurisprudence gets tabled, or even ignored. And so Clinton nominates the best judges the Chamber has seen in a generation, and Bush nominates the best judges they've seen since Hoover. It's a problem. And not one that will just go away when Bush leaves office.Indeed, for a look at how far right the Court has swung since the 70s, I highly recommend the article Cass Sunstein wrote for us a couple months back on John Paul Stevens odd migration from centrist to leftist -- a shift he was able to make without changing any of his opinions. It's eye-opening stuff.(Image used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Mindgutter.) THE CHAMBER'S CHAMBER.
Jeffrey Rosen performed an important service this weekend with a pretty thorough accounting of the Supreme Court's increasing kinship with big business. And we're not just the Roberts and Alitos of the world, but the Ginsbergs and Breyers. The Chamber of Commerce, in fact, was the first organization to endorse Breyer. Their imprimatur helped quiet Republican opposition, and Breyer slid through with 87 votes. “Frankly, we didn’t feel like we had anyone on the court since Justice Powell who truly understood business issues,” [said Robin Conrad, head of the Chamber's litigation Department.] “Justice Breyer came close to that.”Of course, Breyer is thought of as a liberal judge, and given the tilt of the Court, he's certainly what passes for a liberal judge at the moment. But that's a function of the Court's swing right on the one hand, and the strange preeminence social issues have in our discussion of the Court on the other. Nominees are evaluated as liberal and conservative based first on their positions on abortion and second on their other positions on abortion and third on their attitudes towards affirmative action. There's really no fourth. But their take on economic issues, on labor regulations, and on corporate oversight are arguably of equal importance, and certainly of enough importance to seriously consider. But either because those cases are hard to explain during a nomination fight or because they're not considered dramatic testimony, the whole of a nominee's economic jurisprudence gets tabled, or even ignored. And so Clinton nominates the best judges the Chamber has seen in a generation, and Bush nominates the best judges they've seen since Hoover. It's a problem. And not one that will just go away when Bush leaves office.Indeed, for a look at how far right the Court has swung since the 70s, I highly recommend the article Cass Sunstein wrote for us a couple months back on John Paul Stevens odd migration from centrist to leftist -- a shift he was able to make without changing any of his opinions. It's eye-opening stuff.(Image used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Mindgutter.) 
