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Economic inequality

May 9, 2013
Sen. Grassley Takes Aim at Judicial Review, Immigration Reform
by Jeremy Leaming

It seems whenever given the opportunity to weaken the judiciary, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) runs with it and in the process spreads lots of misinformation about the federal courts.

Grassley, who has helped his Republican colleagues in the Senate block or slow-walk President Obama’s judicial nominees, has called for cutting the number of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, discussed here.

Now as the Senate Judiciary Committee begins consideration of the bipartisan comprehensive immigration bill, S. 744, the Ranking Member Grassley has offered 77 amendments to the legislation. Among them is one, dubbed Grassley17, which would isolate immigration court rulings from federal court review. As it stands now, the bill provides for some judicial review. For example, individuals denied citizenship could seek review in a district court or court of appeals pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act.

But Grassley’s effort to alter the comprehensive immigration measure would close the door to federal courts, except for one – in Washington, D.C. and only for review of constitutional challenges. Thus if immigration judges improperly deny or revoke citizenship, their actions will largely go unchallenged.

Not only is Grassley’s effort an affront to judicial review, it is, let’s be honest, a part of a wider attempt to greatly slow or scuttle immigration reform. S. 744 is a rather large bill and far from perfect. It includes stringent enforcement provisions including billions of dollars for the Department of Homeland Security to spend on border enforcement. It also requires undocumented immigrants to wait at least 10 years until they can apply for legal residence and another three years until naturalization, according to The New York Times.

But senators have offered more than 300 amendments to the immigration reform bill. Seth Freed Wessler of ColorLines says the Republican amendments “would largely gut the promise of a path to citizenship and impose nearly unachievable benchmarks for border security.” Nonetheless Wessler notes Democrats control the committee and are thus likely to hold off many of the amendments. Wessler though notes some of Grassley’s other amendments, such as one that would strike language aimed at protecting “immigrants from being deported because” of anti-immigrant laws, such as the one enacted by Arizona.

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Tags:
Economic inequality, Labor law, Immigration, Equality and Liberty, Judicial Nominations, ColorLines, immigration amendments, immigration reform, judicial review, Sen. Chuck Grassley
May 8, 2013
A Senate Republican Goal: Keep the D.C. Circuit Business Friendly
by Jeremy Leaming

While the Obama administration has done much to diversify the federal bench, Senate Republicans have so far successfully kept one of the nation’s most important appellate courts free of any diversity. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rules on significant and often complex matters, including national security concerns; but it also rules on matters that are of great concern to corporate America.

Since the Republican Party is the primary coddler of the super wealthy, it’s hardly surprising that its leaders in the Senate are working feverishly to ensure that President Obama has little if any opportunity to change the ideological makeup of the D.C. Circuit. The graphic (right) produced by People For The American Way is a compelling and accessible picture of the matter. (Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley is also pushing legislation that would cut the number of judges on the bench; he claims the D.C. Circuit has enough judges and a light caseload. For the truth, read retired D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Patricia Wald’s piece for The Washington Post.)

For many years now, the D.C. Circuit has been controlled by conservative judges. There are four vacancies on the bench and Senate Republicans have successfully blocked the president from filling them. As Miranda notes in a PFAW blog post, because of Senate obstructionism Obama is the “first president since Woodrow Wilson to serve a full first term without placing a judge on the D.C. Circuit.”

An opinion yesterday by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit provides yet another example of the Court’s pro-business tilt. It knocked down a rule by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) requiring employers to post notices about the rights of workers, such as joining a union or advocating for safer working conditions. In a post for AFL-CIO NOW, Mike Hall calls the NLRB rule “commonsense and evenhanded,” noting that such notices also inform workers that they do not have to join a union. But the D.C. Circuit found a way to side with corporations that aren’t especially eager to inform workers of their rights pursuant to the National Labor Relations Act.

That opinion follows one from earlier in the year, Canning v. NLRB, where the D.C. Circuit invalidated the president’s appointments to the five-member NLRB. That opinion has been appealed by the Obama administration. In short, the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit essentially redefined what a recess appointment is, one that differs greatly from practice and federal court precedent. (See Sec. 2 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution.)

The D.C. Circuit has also proven hostile to environmental regulations that are often challenged by corporations. In a post for grist, the Constitutional Accountability Center’s Simon Lazarus and Doug Kendall say the D.C. Circuit, on “any given day … has the power to throw the environmental movement into complete disarray.” (They could have added to the great delight of many corporations or the Koch brothers.)

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Tags:
Economic inequality, Environmental protection, Other courts, Labor law, Economic, Workplace and Environment Regulation, Constitutional Accountability Center, National Labor Relations Board, NLRB, People For the American Way
May 6, 2013
Courting Business Interests
by John Schachter

Lest anyone still doubt corporate influence (or is it control?) over the nation’s high court, Adam Liptak’s nearly 3,000-word article in yesterday’s New York Times should resolve any uncertainties. The Court’s business rulings, Liptak notes, “have been, a new study finds, far friendlier to business than those of any court since at least World War II. In the eight years since Chief Justice Roberts joined the court, it has allowed corporations to spend freely in elections in the Citizens United case, has shielded them from class actions and human rights suits, and has made arbitration the favored way to resolve many disputes.”

The latest report, published in April in The Minnesota Law Review, looks far beyond cursory glances and anecdotal examples, studying 2,000 court decisions over a 65-year-period ending in 2011. “The study ranked the 36 justices who served on the court over those 65 years by the proportion of their pro-business votes; all five of the current court’s more conservative members were in the top 10,” Liptak notes. “But the study’s most striking finding was that the two justices most likely to vote in favor of business interests since 1946 are the most recent conservative additions to the court, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., both appointed by President George W. Bush.”

Before right-wing skeptics criticize the latest report as biased propaganda, we should note that the authors who prepared the report – Lee Epstein, a USC professor of law and political science; William M. Landes, an economist at the University of Chicago; and Judge Richard A. Posner, of the federal appeals court in Chicago, who teaches law at the University of Chicago – are no one’s idea of a leftist cabal.

This study, meanwhile, comes on the heels of a new report by the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) that found that the Supreme Court continues to hear more cases involving business interests and “that the Chamber [of Commerce] continues to win the vast majority of its cases pending before the Roberts Court.” ACS’s own Jeremy Leaming took a look at this report and the broader issue just four days ago in a post for ACSblog.

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Tags:
Access to Justice, Class actions, Judicial independence, Economic inequality, Supreme Court, Equality and Liberty, Judicial Nominations, Adam Liptak, Alan Morrison, Chamber of Commerce, Constitutional Accountability Center, corporate court, David Franklin, New York Times, Roberts Court, Spitzer
May 3, 2013
Waiting for Justice
by E. Sebastian Arduengo

Last month, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D–Vt.) reintroduced the Gideon’s Promise Act of 2013 to address the problems plaguing the indigent defense system which have left the promise of Gideon v. Wainwright increasingly hollow for the poorest people in our society. The act would require states to use existing federal funds to improve the administration of criminal justice in a comprehensive, strategic way, and to collaborate with the Department of Justice and local authorities to devise a plan for adequately addressing indigent defense needs. If states refuse to comply then the Department of Jusice would have the power to take them to court to make sure that they are meeting their constitutional obligations.

But Leahy’s bill doesn’t go nearly far enough to address budget-related failings in our criminal justice system. With sequestration at the federal level, and years of budget cutbacks at the state level, we’re now to the point where years of political indifference to funding the judicial branch has affected the basic operation of the courts and the services that we expect them to provide.

This is a crisis that’s reached such endemic proportions that Chief Justice John Roberts made it a focus of last year’s state of the judiciary report, where he made the case that the federal courts were already being as cost-effective as they could possibly be, and warned that “significant and prolonged shortfall[s] in judicial funding would inevitably result in the delay or denial of justice for the people the courts serve.”

That scenario is already playing out in state and local courts across the country.

The effect of over a billion dollars of cuts in the last four years has been nothing short of devastating to the Los Angeles Superior Court system. Court officials plan to shutter a dozen courthouses and make an indeterminate number of staff layoffs. The only thing these courthouses will be used for now is for collecting traffic fines and administrative functions. The actual business of dispensing justice will be triaged at the remaining courthouses in the county, “where certain types of cases are heard at each remaining courthouse.”

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Access to Justice, Economic inequality, Indigent defense, Procedural barriers to court, Judicial Funding
May 2, 2013
Business Lobby Continues Winning Ways Before Roberts Court, CAC Reports
by Jeremy Leaming

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has fared increasingly well before the nation’s top court, a trend that does not appear to be dissipating. In fall 2010, the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) reported that as the Supreme Court became more conservative, the nation’s lobby for corporate interests began to win more and more of its cases.

In a new report, CAC reveals the Supreme Court continues to hear more cases involving business interests and “that the Chamber continues to win the vast majority of its cases pending before the Roberts Court. Although many of the Chamber’s cases this Term are still pending, it’s already off to a strong start, wining six cases so far and losing only one – a record that’s consistent with (and somewhat stronger than) the Chamber’s overall tally before the Roberts Court to date. Indeed, since John Roberts took over as Chief Justice and Justice Samuel Alito succeeded Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the Chamber has prevailed in 69 percent of its cases overall (66 of 95 cases from 2006 – 2013).” [Footnote 2 of the report provides more information about the cases already decided this Term].

As its initial report showed the Chamber has found more success protecting its interests as the high court has drifted rightward. The business lobby’s win-rate improved during the Rehnquist Court and has climbed since.

CAC’s report notes the business cases before the high court have been overshadowed by high-profile cases involving equality and voting rights. But as Zachary Roth reports for MSNBC, CAC’s work reveals that an aggressive strategy launched by the Chamber in the ‘70s is paying handsomely.

Roth notes the Powell memo – written by Lewis Powell Jr. before he was nominated to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon. Powell wrote to the head of the Chamber and warned that an “assault on the enterprise system is broadly based on and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.” His memo went on to blast leftists, students on college campuses and Ralph Nader for advancing the alleged attack on free enterprise and softly chastised business leaders for not responding. Powell then encouraged the Chamber to help organize business interests to fight back.

CAC highlights this term’s Comcast Corp. v. Behrend opinion, in which the high court’s right-wing justices claimed the class action suit against Comcast was “improperly certified.”

It’s not the first time the high court’s right-wing bloc has turned to a technicality to dismiss class actions against larger corporations. The opinions in Wal-Mart v. Dukes and AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion were also ones that have helped create a troubling dynamic of a Supreme Court that caters to corporate interests to the great detriment of individuals. Read CAC’s, “Not So Risky Business: The Chamber of Commerce’s Quiet Success Before the Roberts Court – An Early Report for 2012 – 2013.”

Tags:
Access to Justice, Class actions, Economic inequality, Supreme Court, Chamber of Commerce, Constitutional Accountability Center, Powell memo, Zachary Roth