Why the next Supreme Court Justice must be a liberal
During his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court in 2005, John Roberts assured senators that his job as a judge was merely "to call balls and strikes." It was a familiar, homey allusion, deliberately designed to suggest that ideology didn't — or anyway, shouldn't — play a role in deciding cases. He would be interpreting the plain meaning of the law, not making up his own.
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But as fond as conservatives are of this kind of imagery, it's mostly a myth. Recently the Constitutional Accountability Center took a look at Supreme Court rulings during the Roberts era, but instead of looking at hot button social issues they looked at the kinds of rulings that, although they get less attention, actually take up the bulk of the court's time: those involving business and corporate law. The results were pretty startling.
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The kinds of regulatory issues involved in these cases are, in the long run, more important than all but the most explosive culture war cases. They include things like Citizens United, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited sums in political campaigns; Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which effectively eliminated the right to sue for race or gender pay discrimination; and Exxon v. Baker, which slashed the damage award in the Exxon Valdez oil spill case by 80%. And those are only the big ones. You can add in hundreds of other, smaller cases that have slowly but steadily chipped away at the right to hold corporations accountable over the past three decades.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/06/balls-and-strikes-and-roberts-court
More in the link-good read
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