Simon Lazarus and Harper Jean Tobin explore Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's decades-long quest to not only deregulate industry, but immunize companies from torts at both the state and federal level:
This past two weeks, Justice Scalia and his fellow conservatives on the Supreme Court could be seen merrily shooting at regulatory targets on both the federal and state "fronts." With respect to the latter, they were focused on a target prophetically singled out in his Federalist Society speech: State laws holding manufacturers liable for "design defects," which "subject interstate businesses to greatly increased damages." Scalia's 1982 agenda contemplated federal legislation to curb state regulatory excess, in keeping with the traditional conservative nostrum that major policy decisions should be made by the people's elected representatives, not unaccountable "activist" judges. But after a quarter century of service on the federal bench, "judicial restraint" has been dropped from Scalia's playbook. He and his allies appear on course to reverse generations of precedent and, with scant or no authorization from Congress, shut down all 50 states' tort law regimes insofar as they apply to medical devices, drugs, or other products regulated by the federal Food & Drug Administration.
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--The Editors
