WHEN CORPORATE INTERESTS AND THE RADICAL RIGHT CONTROL OUR COURTS

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• “John Roberts Played This Supreme Court Term Perfectly” (6/28/19): Since Anthony Kennedy’s departure from the Court one year ago, many were quick to dub Chief Justice John Roberts as the Court’s new “swing vote.” However, now that Roberts’ first term as the Court’s decisive vote in major political cases has drawn to a close, Roberts has only paid lip service to upholding the legitimacy of the Court as an institution, “pushing our nation’s laws as far to the right as possible without cracking the façade of that institutional integrity.”
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John Roberts Played This Supreme Court Term Perfectly

• Robert’s Rules of Misrepresentation (6/28/19): While some pundits have hailed Robert’s decision in Department of Commerce v. New York as a victory for liberals, a closer examination of Roberts’ majority opinion is troubling. When Department of Commerceis considered in conjunction with other opinions from this term, it becomes clear that “Roberts has illustrated the path forward for those Republicans who seek to diminish the power of nonwhite voters and maintain their own power even as they earn fewer and fewer actual votes.” The decision demonstrates that “Roberts’s red line is not state dishonesty or flagrant discrimination. Rather, he is willing to countenance both as long as the Trump administration does not produce a paper trail documenting the fact that it is lying.”
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Roberts's Rules of Misrepresentation

• Here’s how to Fix Partisan Gerrymandering, Now that the Supreme Court Kicked it Back to the States” (7/02/19): The Ruchodecision shifts the battleground to fix partisan gerrymandering to the states. While little research on redistricting reform has been conducted, a preliminary analysis of every state legislative redistricting plan redrawn after 2010 suggests that states that have enacted independent, non-partisan redistricting plans have likely succeeded in neutralizing partisan influence. However, passing laws requiring such independent redistricting at the state level will require a fight, as state politicians are likely to resist legislation requiring independent redistricting. Even then, in “many of the states where reformers have won key victories, lawmakers have resisted implementing those reforms.”
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Analysis | Here's how to fix partisan gerrymandering, now that the Supreme Court kicked it back to…

• Ideology, Not Politics, Is What Makes John Roberts Run (2-part blog):“[T]he NFIB dissent [critiquing Roberts’ majority opinion upholding the Affordable Care Act] marks … [a] consequential tectonic shift: the formal acceptance, at the highest level, of a hard understanding that, to be counted as a member in good standing of the current conservative — elite legal guild, a judge must be ready to twist the law to further nakedly political priorities and interests of conservatives, i.e., of Republicans.”
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Balkinization: Ideology, Not Politics, Is What Makes John Roberts Run -- Part One

• Let’s Not Forget the Establishment Clause: It’s Past Time to Consider the Impact of Religion’s Grip on Public Policy and the Supreme Court.“There is no chance the Supreme Court will be receptive to Establishment Clause arguments. That’s all the more reason not to lose the Establishment Clause from our working civic vocabulary. … It’s taking us just a few years of disingenuous politics to hurl us backward to a place many of us never imagined.”
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Opinion | Let's Not Forget the Establishment Clause

• Senator Warren on the Corporate Capture of the Federal Courts:“There is an intense fight going on, right now, over what our federal courts will look like. It is a fight over whether those courts will remain a neutral forum, faithfully interpreting the law and dispensing fair and impartial justice — or whether we will see the corporate capture of the federal courts, with the courts transformed into one more rigged game. And right now, we are losing that fight.”
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Redirecting...

• Trump’s New Judicial Litmus Test: Shrinking ‘the Administrative State’: “With surprising frankness, the White House has laid out a plan to fill the courts with judges devoted to a legal doctrine that challenges the broad power federal agencies have to interpret laws and enforce regulations, often without being subject to judicial oversight. Those not on board with this agenda, the White House has said, are unlikely to be nominated by President Trump.”
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Trump's New Judicial Litmus Test: Shrinking 'the Administrative State'

• Corporations and the Supreme Court: Since Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito joined the Supreme Court, the Court has become increasingly friendly toward Big Business, often elevating the interests of corporations over those of individuals. Since 2010, Constitutional Accountability Center has tracked this trend through its reports on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its record before the Roberts Court.
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Corporations and the Supreme Court Archives | Constitutional Accountability Center

• Sen. Whitehouse: There’s a ‘Crisis of Credibility’ at the U.S. Supreme Court: The Roberts Court has shown an “undeniable pattern of political allegiance.” What explains its record of 73 partisan 5–4 wins for the Republican Donor class?
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Sen. Whitehouse: There's a 'Crisis of Credibility' at the U.S. Supreme Court | National Law Journal

• History Will Judge John Roberts if His Court’s Steady Stream of 5–4 Pro-GOP Decisions Continues: Roberts now faces a momentous choice: Does he stem the torrent of 73 partisan 5–4 decisions benefiting big Republican interests? Or does he double down into a continued payday? The corporate and special interest forces that fashioned this court majority will be watching. So, of course, will history.
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History Will Judge John Roberts if His Court's Steady Stream of 5-4 Pro-GOP Decisions Continues

• Court Capture: Professor J. Jonas Anderson challenges the notion that the federal courts cannot be captured, and points to one court exhibiting many of the classic signs.
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Court Capture

• The Chamber in the Chambers: The Making of a Big-Business Judicial Money Machine: Inside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s judicial climate change operation and its efforts to transform the composition of the state court benches by facilitating the election of business-friendly judges.
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The Chamber in the Chambers: The Making of a Big-Business Judicial Money Machine

• Benjamin Johnson, The Supreme Court’s Political Docket: How Ideology and the Chief Justice Control the Court’s Agenda and Shape Law, 50 Conn. L. Rev. 581, 585 (2018): Johnson gives a comprehensive overview of the problems with the current cert process, noting that the Court’s certiorari decisions have led to the perception that the Court is ideologically driven. Johnson provides four policy prescriptions — changing the rules, releasing votes/records to ensure transparency, amending the Rule of 4, and instituting an external review body in charge of cert petitions.
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• The Push for a Conservative Court: The Supreme Court has swung from left to right throughout most of its history. Yet, the selection of Brett Kavanaugh culminates a three-decade long push to establish a reliable conservative majority on the Supreme Court that will continue to shape the law to the will of the right.
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A Conservative Court Push Decades in the Making, With Effects for Decades to Come

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