Corporations Fared Even Better Than President Trump in the Supreme Court’s Prior Term, and the Upcoming Term Provides More Opportunities for Corporate Wins
WASHINGTON, DC – With the start of the new Supreme Court term on Monday, the Constitutional Accountability Center has just released its annual report examining the success of big business interests before the Roberts Court.
For more than 15 years, the Constitutional Accountability Center has documented how the Roberts Court overwhelmingly favors corporate interests. As this year’s report details, the term that ended this summer illustrates just how powerful a grip corporate interests have over today’s Supreme Court—specifically, over its conservative supermajority. Industry was victorious in all the most important business cases, racking up a more impressive record than even the Trump administration.
The report also looks ahead to the new term, discussing cases on this term’s docket that present opportunities to continue these trends. The Chamber has already filed amicus briefs in 10 cases, each of which involves an effort to prevent companies from being answerable to the government or to the victims of their lawbreaking.
Constitutional Accountability Center Deputy Chief Counsel Brian Frazelle, the author of the report, issued this comment:
Year after year, corporate interests get what they want from the Supreme Court, securing huge wins that often hurt consumers, workers, and the environment, without suffering comparably broad defeats. That was no less true last year. As usual under the Roberts Court, corporate losses last term generally resulted in maintaining the status quo, whereas corporate victories aggressively reshaped the legal landscape, repeatedly overturning settled precedent. Notably, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s position prevailed in nearly every case in which the result was debatable enough to divide the Justices. And the Court’s conservative supermajority voted for the Chamber’s position nearly twice as often as did the three more liberal Justices.
This term promises the possibility of more of the same, with many cases brought to the Court by corporate interests already on the docket. As oral arguments for the new term begin, the question is not whether the Justices are likely to give corporate America another winning term—instead, the question is simply how far they will go.