Big Business Prepares to Buy the Supreme Court

Another day, another couple of stories about how Big Business is preparing to buy the Supreme Court, just like it has bought Congress and the executive branch.

The Washington Post reports that "business advocates are raising millions of dollars, plotting major lobbying campaigns, and quietly working to influence the president" in his choice to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. They have "told the White House that they plan to bankroll large-scale efforts to promote the president's choice."

The campaign has been going on for some time: "For 2 1/2 years, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business association, has privately funneled to the White House staff in-depth analyses of decisions rendered by federal appeals court judges -- the most likely pool of high court candidates." Meanwhile, CNN reports that some pro-business groups have already identified two judges they would favor "because both were once private practitioners who represented business interests."

The Post identifies two key areas Corporate America is looking to dominate on the Supreme Court. First, Big Business wants to "limit the amount that victims can collect from companies beyond the actual cost of the harm inflicted by an accident." In other words, they want to eliminate punitive damages - the damages awarded beyond the scope of an injury designed to punish a company for negligence. These damages are often large in order to create a deterrent for the company in question - and all other companies - from ever again engaging in the negligence outlined in the case. Without punitive damages, companies can go and harm people and simply write off the smaller cost of pain/suffering damages to customers as a minor cost of doing business.

Second, Corporate America wants "to impose national, as opposed to state, standards on a number of regulatory and liability matters." That is, they want to eliminate state governments' ability to pass pro-environment, pro-consumer and pro-worker laws by getting the Supreme Court to preempting them with federal laws. This is consistent with the Bush administration's previous efforts to preempt state laws, even though the GOP claims to support "local control" and "states' rights." A Supreme Court that ran roughshod over state sovereignty would affect almost every aspect of Americans' economic life - and not in a good way.

As I have said before, this is where the fulcrum of the Supreme Court fight is going to be: in the smoky back room where Corporate America dominates the corrupt politicians and political operatives in Washington, D.C. Despite the media's constant focus on left vs. right, the fault line is most often between Big Business and the Rest of Us.

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