“Conservative” (i.e. pro-corporate) justices have had a majority on the US supreme court for four and half decades now. There are now decades of precedent firmly on the side of corporate executives vs. customers, employees, or the general public.
More generally, corporations have coopted or subverted most other institutions in the society, including the DOJ and the legislature. (Hooray for unlimited anonymous campaign finance.)
And although it's not necessarily a liberal vs. conservative issue, it would be deceptive not to point out that this is entirely because of the Republican justices.
As jaded as I sound, it's a little naive to look at this like its about law or justice. Its much more about power and influence. And corporations have a disproportionate amount of it.
I think we're all going to be a little disappointed next week and we'll have three justices to thank: Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They have regularly allowed conservative platforms and politics to come before law to influence their decisions. (And that's not meant to be flame-bait for conservatives because when the liberals have the majority, they pull the same stunts.)
The really sad is that after the Bush v. Gore decision and Citizens United, the court lost its credibility and left the public entirely disillusioned with the legal process.
The Supreme Court is a political organization that likes to pretend it's something else. I think that's always been the case and I agree it isn't inherently one party or the other.
That said, with the notable exception of the Warren court, SCOTUS has been conservative for its whole history.
I linked to a summary of a UVA paper evaluating the SC decisions of the last century or so and graphing them as pro or anti-corporatist, which concluded that the current court is the most pro-business ever. You have handwaved that it maybe used to be this bad. If you have some sort of basis for your belief, I would be happy to consider it.
I found this[0] overview from a few months ago to be helpful, and doesn't fall foul of describing the justice's views as coming solely from their being conservative or not. One example:
> Justice Neil Gorsuch told Prelogar that he was less concerned about businesses subject to changing regulations, observing that the companies “can take care of themselves” and seek relief through the political process. Instead, Gorsuch pointed to less powerful individuals who may be affected by the actions of federal agencies, such as immigrants, veterans seeking benefits, and Social Security claimants. In those cases, Gorsuch stressed, Chevron virtually always works for the agencies and against the “little guy.”
If you think "complete functional control over the supreme court for likely decades" is insignificant enough to make conservatives count as a minority you need to pay more attention to the powers and impact of the supreme court. They can effectively overrule any legislation if they wish and have proven a desire to do so.
I'm sorry, I can't right now in detail. The general trend started with Citizens United and followed through Masterpiece is a increased set of precedents for corporate personhood, with some harsh dissents from the Alito/Thomas/Gorsuch contingent in cases where that was at issue (but corp. personhood side lost). When Kennedy retires and of Kavanaugh is his replacement, that will give put an awful lot on Robert's judgement as the swing decision. If I'm really getting picky, the lack of consistency in Trump v Hawaii and the Masterpiece case shows a certain amount of prioritizing partisan concerns over logical consistency (imo, ianal).
edit: taking corporate personhood to logical extremes reverses a lot prior precedent and I would have doubted it would have happened until recently.
J.D. here. The SCOTUS becoming more conservative would have helped your limited-government view (and mine). Not more liberal. On balance the group most likely to find hard limitations on the power of the government to control people, capital, and companies are the originalists.
Sometimes it seems as though in Silicon Valley everyone assumes conservative = bad, liberal = good. The truth is always more complex.
If you think conservatives have a monopoly on this, then take a look at some of the most important Supreme Court cases from FDR through the 1970s or so.
With the recent decision, we can see where it goes back to e.g. the creation of the Federalist Society in 1982, how nearly every conservative Supreme Court nominee since Scalia has been a member (Roberts is disputed but the other 5 current justices are, as were Scalia and Bork), and how some very clever and/or very dirty procedural maneuvering resulted in the conservative majority on the Supreme Court today.
Did that happen with the Burger court that decided Roe? A quick check suggests that of the 9 justices on the Burger court, 4 were nominated by Nixon, 2 by Eisenhower, and 1 each by FDR, JFK, and LBJ. I really have no idea, I'm sure there were plenty of politics involved with all of those as well but I tend to think justices of this era were nominated more on merit than ideology.
They will certainly be attacked but unless conservatives get a sixth seat in the court, they are unlikely to succeed. Justices are political appointees so there is some selection for values at play but they take their jobs seriously and vote across partisan lines much more often than our politicians.
Justice Kennedy, the conservative swing vote, has been supportive of restrictions on abortion but he has explicitly said that he prefers to defend the precedent Roe v Wade set. He even wrote the majority opinion in support of marriage equality. Even in controversial decisions like Citizens United where I vehemently disagree with him, I have to admit that he seems like a dedicated constitutional scholar that believes in preserving the integrity of the institution of the Supreme Court and the US constitution. His opinions are well thought out, are based on a balanced view of strict and loose interpretation of the constitution, and he takes his role as a bipartisan seriously so I think we still have a reliable firewall in the court.
> The Dirks case is an example of what has been called the “white collar paradox” – that conservative Supreme Court justices, who rarely vote to reverse convictions of poor criminal defendants, have shown a clear sympathy for rich ones. The conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, one study found, voted for defendants in about 7 percent of non-white-collar criminal cases – and 82 percent of white-collar ones.
> After Watergate, Congress passed a tough campaign finance law, with strict limits on both contributions and expenditures. In 1976, the Court struck down the expenditure limits, on the dubious theory that money equals speech under the first amendment. That let wealthy people spend as much as they wanted to elect candidates, and the Court has been opening the floodgates further ever since. In 2010, in Citizens United v. F.E.C., it took the radical step of saying that corporations have the same right to spend money to elect candidates as people do.
> In a series of rulings, including a high-profile one against Wal-Mart in 2011, it has made it far harder for workers and consumers to band together in class action lawsuits, which are often the only way for working-class people to get justice. In the Wal-Mart case, the Court threw out a class action by about 1.5 million female workers, insisting they did not have enough in common to sue together. The Court has also decided that the Due Process Clause bars what it views as excessively large punitive damage awards. It then used that made-up doctrine to drastically reduce jury awards against Exxon Shipping for the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and State Farm over its mistreatment of a physically disabled customer.
It's scary to think that this court is going to get more conservative for decades to come. I wonder if any consumer or environmental protections will survive.
More generally, corporations have coopted or subverted most other institutions in the society, including the DOJ and the legislature. (Hooray for unlimited anonymous campaign finance.)
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