Business Has Its Own Agenda

WSJ reports For a High Court Nomination, Business Has Its Own Agenda - When religious conservatives rally their troops for the much-anticipated fight over the Supreme Court's next vacancy, they invoke Roe v. Wade. When regulatory lawyer C. Boyden Gray recruits business executives for the battle, he cites Geier v. American Honda Motor Co.... The emerging corporate agenda is different from, and at times contradicts, that of their religious-conservative allies. The Christian right, represented by groups such as the Family Research Council in Washington, has been lobbying the Bush administration to appoint a Supreme Court justice who opposes abortion and gay marriage and favors school prayer and public religious displays. Top business priorities include more protection for intellectual-property rights, more flexibility in clean-air emissions standards, restriction of jury awards and a lenient interpretation of the Sarbanes-Oxley law that imposes new accountability and disclosure requirements on businesses.... In some cases, the biggest heroes of social conservatives -- Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia -- have given jitters to corporate lawyers. This often-allied pair has concluded that the Constitution contains nothing that protects business from huge punitive damage awards.

They are right. It does not. And we don't need judges that "find" things in the Constitution that were not written by the founders. If business wants limits on punitive damage awards (something I support), they should get Congress to set those limits.

In 1995, a court majority threw out a $2 million damage verdict against BMW for failing to disclose that a car had been damaged before sale. Justice Scalia dissented. In a speech earlier this year, he mocked the majority for inventing a nonexistent "Excessive Damages Clause of the Bill of Rights." The potential for outright conflict between business and religious conservatives is personified by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, a Clinton appointee. Pro-business legal scholars and practitioners say the former law professor and aide to liberal Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has the best understanding of corporate issues of any current member of the court. Justice Breyer wrote the majority opinion favoring Honda in the Geier case. James Dobson, president of the Colorado-based conservative-advocacy group Focus on the Family, once said Justice Breyer ought to be impeached because he was too sympathetic to gay rights.

As indicated here Breyer voted with the other liberals on Kelo, and as indicated here Justice Stephen Breyer believes that the Constitution is a living document and that the role of the court is to interpret and reinterpret it continually in the light of new ideas and new norms. That is exactly what we DO NOT NEED