[Viva Le Dissention]

Yeah, because it's not that we would want to actually be able to punish companies for flagrant violations of the law or anything.

I mean, heck, if you're a Fortune 500 company, you should be above the law, right?

Today's affirmation (and I stress "affirmation," since this has been the law since 1996) serves to do nothing but further insure that big companies are completely insulated from their wrongdoing.

[hchutch]

Seems to me that all SCOTUS did was expand the protection against excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment to include civil cases, which is quite reasonable given the fact that the standard of proof is much lower than in a criminal case.

The trial lawyers have imposed a hidden "lawyer tax" on this economy, often by running up punitive damages to an obscene amount. That's not provided for in the Constitution, by any stretch of the imagination.

So it took what some might consider judicial activism. Big deal. SCOTUS has just cut the lawyer tax on the American economy and that is a good thing. Don't look this gift horse in the mouth.