The Supreme Court’s Business Cases Reviewed

Campus Report ^ | November 6, 2008 | Irene Warren

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The Supreme Court’s Business Cases Reviewed

by: Irene Warren, November 06, 2008

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for Public Policy Research Legal Center hosted its annual review of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007-2008 October term recently, and to mull over its regulatory framework of prime business cases, which make up the bulk of its civil lawsuits.

“Recent regulatory and financial crises bring increased urgency to the examination of the justices’ future course,” as AEI pointed out. “Will Congress and the Executive finally create a stable regulatory framework, or will there be uncontrolled litigation and regulation over past misconduct, real and imagined? What role is the Court likely to play?” These were just a few of the many questions that legal experts and practitioners addressed at the annual event.

According to the AEI’s summary of the event “by taking up cases on liability, punitive damages, and preemption, the [Supreme] Court is playing a large role in shaping the business community.”

Although Mark T. Stancel, an appellate litigator and partner at Robbins Russell, agreed that the nation’s current financial crisis ranks as a high priority for debate in the Supreme Court today, as Congress has passed a statute to bail out $700 billion in companies with distressed assets, he also argued that more attention should be focused on the lower courts.

“While it’s certainly legitimate to focus a lot on the Supreme Court and what they do with respect to the business community, I think there is surprisingly little attention paid to the lower courts, how their judges are selected, what influences they’re under, and what they do with respect to the business community, because I think that in the end…they have far more impact day to day on the business community than the Supreme Court ever will,” Stancel argued......