Question

The article presents an analysis of the current outlook of the highest court in the United States. We often think of courts (and especially the Supreme Court) as dispassionate and thoroughly objective institutions. Yet as the text materials in Chapter One discuss, there are various schools of jurisprudence, some of whom try to examine the ways in which courts really operate. Robin Conrad and Ralph Nader have opposed views on the current court that appear prominently in the article.

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16supreme-t.html?_r=3&scp=2&sq=rosen+supreme+court+inc&st=nyt&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Describe their respective viewpoints. Does this article change your impression of the Supreme Court? Why or why not?

Answer 1

It all began with Powell. To argue against the growing control of public-interest litigation groups like Public Citizen, Powell urged the Chamber of Commerce to set in motion a multifront lobbying crusade on behalf of business interests which include hiring top business lawyers to bring cases before the Supreme Court. “The judiciary,” Powell predicted, “may possibly be the most important mechanism for social, economic and political change.” After progressively increasing its lobbying hard work, the chamber established the National Chamber Litigation Center to file cases as well as briefs on behalf of business interests in federal and state courts.

Today, the Chamber of Commerce is an daunting lobbying force. In order to accomplish its task of serving “the unified interests of American business,” it collects membership dues from more than three million businesses and related organizationsin order to lobby the White House, Congress as well as regulatory agencies on legal matters. However its battle in opposition to the forces of Naderism got off to a slow start. In 1983, as Robin Conrad arrived at the chamber and in the meantime the Supreme Court was handing Nader and his allies significant victories. It was in that year, the court apprehended that President Reagan’s secretary of transportation, Andrew L. Lewis Jr., acted on a whim when he repealed a regulation, inspired by Nader’s advocacy, which required automakers to install passive restraints like air bags. While in 1986, the chamber supported a defy to the Environmental Protection Agency’s aerial surveillance of a Dow Chemical plant. This let to the chamber’s side defeat, 5-4.

However sooner or later, things began to transform. The chamber was on track winning cases in part by refining its strategy. With the help of Conrad, the chamber’s Supreme Court litigation program started to offer practice moot-court arguments for lawyers listed to argue important cases. The chamber also started hiring the most-respected Democratic and Republican Supreme Court advocates to influence the court to hear more business cases. Even though many of the businesses which belong to the Chamber of Commerce have their own in-house lawyers, they prefered the chamber file “friend of the court” briefs on their behalf. The chamber would make a decision which of the many cases brought to its consideration were in the long-term strategic significance of American business while hiring the most important business lawyers to write supporting briefs or argue the case.

This article changes my impression of supreme court because having seen how the working of the supreme court which is meant to work for the common interest, the common man’s benefit is being thwarted by the highly influential guilds and institutions.