Business & the Roberts Court
Abstract
The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts is often described as a “pro-business” court, favouring the interests of business groups and large corporations over those of consumers, workers, and the public at large. Such accusations are often based on the selective citation of individual cases in which business interests prevailed without considering the cumulative content of the Court’s decisions and their implications for American law. This book provides a thorough examination of the Roberts Court’s approach to business-related cases and the first critical examination of the thesis that the Roberts Court is “pro-business.” Chapter authors consider the Roberts Court’s approach in specific areas of the law, including antitrust, securities regulation, and pre-emption, as well as the Court’s combined decisions across business-related issues. Taken together, the analyses in this book suggest that there are aspects of the Court’s approach to business-related cases that are definitely advantageous to business groups, but that this appears to be the result of other doctrinal commitments and legal policy preferences, and not the result of favortism toward business litigants and their interests.