http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/11/ma_564_01.html
The Making of the Corporate Judiciary How big business is quietly funding a judicial revolution in the nation's courts By Michael Scherer November/December 2003 Issue * Community Rights Council * People for the American Way * Texans for Public Justice Like many of President Bush's lower-court nominees, William H. Pryor Jr. has had a hand in just about every legal social theory that drives Senate Democrats to outrage. As the attorney general of Alabama, he pushed for the execution of the mentally retarded, compared homosexuality to bestiality, defended the posting of Bible quotes at the courthouse door, and advocated rescinding a portion of the Voting Rights Act. He called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history." So when Pryor, a boyish 41-year-old, came before the Judiciary Committee in June wearing a carefully folded kerchief in his pin-striped suit, opposing senators clashed over whether such views disqualified him from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Republicans, led by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, praised Pryor's distinguished career, his numerous awards, and the hundreds of letters supporting his nomination. They tossed him softball questions about his "mainstream" approach to the law. Democrats, by turn, hammered at Pryor's conservative social stands. Didn't it matter that he had once canceled a family vacation to Disney World to avoid a gay and lesbian event? Could someone who blamed the Supreme Court for "the slaughter of millions" fairly interpret the law? Did the only state attorney general to challenge the Violence Against Women Act deserve a lifetime appointment? "I don't understand, looking at your record, how one can conclude that you don't have an agenda," said Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, leading the Democratic attack. It was a classic confrontation, one that has been repeated again and again with President Bush's judicial nominees. But it also obscured the most important factor in Pryor's swift rise from Mobile, Alabama, to the national stage: his longtime courting of corporate America. "The business community must be engaged heavily in the election process as it affects legal and judicial offices," Pryor told business leaders in 1999, after refusing to join other attorneys general in lawsuits against the tobacco and gun industries. To facilitate that engagement, Pryor created a controversial group called the Republican Attorneys General Association, which skirted campaign-finance laws by allowing corporations to give unlimited checks anonymously to support the campaigns of Pryor and other "conservative and free market oriented Attorneys General." With such activism, Pryor positioned himself in the vanguard of a stealth campaign by American business to change the way that state and federal law is interpreted. Since 1998, major corporations -- Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and the insurance giant AIG, to name a few -- have spent more than $100 million through front groups to remake courts that have long been a refuge for wronged consumers and employees. By targeting incumbent judges, they have tilted state supreme courts to pro-business majorities and ousted aggressive attorneys general. At the same time, corporate lobbyists have blitzed state legislators with tort-reform proposals, overseeing the passage of new laws in 24 states over the past year alone. Now, with a sympathetic ear in the White House, corporate America is taking its legal agenda to the federal bench with a behind-the-scenes campaign of high-powered lobbying and interest-group advertising. Pryor is just one of the corporate stars. Several of President Bush's nominees to federal appeals and district courts -- and even White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, a former Texas Supreme Court justice who now selects federal nominees for the president -- owe their careers to the support of the insurance, retail, and energy industries that got them elected on the state level. The nominees' legal approaches have been nurtured by a string of corporate foundations that fund university programs and ideological groups like the Federalist Society. And their promotion to the federal bench coincides with an ambitious corporate legislative agenda, backed by more than 475 lobbyists, that seeks to force limits on jury awards and move lawsuits out of state courts, where judges historically have favored plaintiffs. In Congress, the House Majority Leader, Rep. Tom DeLay, has formed a working group on "judicial accountability" to push for the approval of the president's nominees and launch investigations of liberal federal judges. "What you have is a wholesale effort to hijack the federal judiciary," says Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and former corporate defense lawyer. "They clearly want to put in a more conservative judiciary and then start stacking the deck by removing more and more cases to the federal courts." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark Printer at MyInks.com. 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