Billy Corriher at the Center for American Progress writes—Big Business Is Still Dominating State Supreme Courts:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the billionaire Koch brothers, and their bigbusiness allies have engaged in a decades-long effort to elect pro-corporate judges to state courts. In 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote a secret memo to the chamber arguing that big business was under attack from institutions he perceived as liberal: academics, the media, college students, and politicians. He also cited the public’s support for legislation to protect consumers and the environment. Powell lamented that “few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders.” Powell suggested a solution:
The Chamber . . . should consider assuming a broader and more vigorous role in the political arena. American business and the enterprise system have been affected as much by the courts as by the executive and legislative branches of government. Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.
Later that same year, Powell joined the U.S. Supreme Court following his nomination by President Richard M. Nixon. By the early 1990s, the Supreme Court had a clear conservative majority.
The Chamber of Commerce and its state affiliates then began shifting theirattention to state courts. In 2000, the chamber launched a $10 million effort to elect judges “with strong pro-business backgrounds” in five states.5 A law review article published around the same time by John Echeverria, a professor at Vermont Law School, reported that “a little known Oklahoma-based group with close ties to Koch Industries . . . has organized a nationwide program to promote the election of state judges sympathetic to business interests in environmental and other cases.” Echeverria said the group operated under the name “Citizens for Judicial Review” during the 1996 election, and he called it “a kind of nationwide franchising operation for pro-business advocacy in state judicial elections.” Since that effort began, big business has spent millions of dollars to elect pro-corporate judges who tend to vote for corporate defendants and against injured workers or consumers.
The same pro-business groups have also aggressively argued for laws that limit the rights of injured individuals to sue corporations, health care providers, or anyone whose negligence contributed to the injury. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2002—A war resolution all of Congress can support:
The administration briefed some members of Congress on the Iraqi situation, but apparently offered no new information. […]
[H]ere's a resolution that everyone can support, and will ensure we don't go to war:
We, the Congress of the United States, authorize force to effect 'Regime Change' in Iraq, provided the following conditions are met:
1. The Administration certifies that Iraq is manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, and provides evidence of such; 2. The Administration, working alongside the U.N. Security Council, makes a bona fide and concerted effort to reintroduce UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq, in accordance to previous Security Council resolutions; and 3. The Administration secures new authorization to effect 'regime change' from the U.N. Security Council.
You know they'll never be able to get Security Council authorization. Oh, we can have lots of fun with this resolution -- we can add requirements that the US have binding commitments from other nations for Iraq's rebuilding, or requirements that the US enter battle alongside a broad international coalition of more than just UK.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin says post-Labor Day, polling models shift from RV to LV. Phyllis Schlafley shifts from LV to RV. The press gets its conference. Fox settles with Carlson. More on Trump’s campaign grifting, ties to Pam Bondi, and Melanija’s immigration status.
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