Last year, the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC), a left-leaning think tank and law firm, wanted to determine
how Chamber of Commerce-friendly the Supreme Court actually is. Turns out, it's damned Chamber-friendly, with a nearly perfect score in cases in which the Chamber has provided briefs to the Court. As of that report in June 2012, the Chamber had won 68 percent of the cases in the Roberts in which it provided a brief, and was seven for seven in last spring's term.
The CAC just released an update noting the "emerging story about the Supreme Court’s business-heavy caseload this Term and the Chamber of Commerce’s continued success before the Roberts Court generally."
All told, the Chamber of Commerce has filed a whopping 18 amicus briefs this Term—just below its record number of 21 in October Term 2010. Overall, the Court will likely decide 76 cases this Term, meaning that the Chamber will have participated in roughly 24% of the Court’s decided cases.
This in itself is an important story. For instance, during the final five years of the Burger Court—just before the first member of the current conservative bloc (Justice Antonin Scalia) assumed his seat—the Justices were hearing twice as many cases (between 153 and 160 per Term) as they are now. At the same time, the Chamber was filing in an average of seven cases per Term, or approximately 4% of the Court’s cases overall. Therefore, even as the Court is now hearing far fewer cases, the Chamber is participating in a greater number of them. Over the past thirty years, the Chamber’s participation rate has increased six-fold, from 4% in the early 1980s to 24% today.
This dramatic increase in participation is a reflection, in part, of the Chamber’s success in shaping the Court’s docket. As SCOTUSblog reported in early April, the Chamber remains “the country’s preeminent petition-pusher,” as it filed the greatest number ofamicus briefs at the cert. stage of any private organization during SCOTUSblog’s three-year study period (running from May 2009 to August 2012)
Thus, it's not by accident that the Chamber is active in more cases, that the Court is hearing more cases the Chamber interested in. That's because the Chamber has become far more aggressive in pushing its agenda in the federal courts and making that the agenda for the courts. But it's also winning; six cases so far this term, with just one loss. Three of those cases were decided 5-4, bringing the Chamber's winning percentage with the conservative justices in the Roberts Court to 82 percent. There are 10 more cases to come.