Is the Business of the Roberts Court (Still) Business?
My contribution to an interdisciplinary symposium on "Donald J. Trump, the Supreme Court, and American Constitutionalism"
My article, "Is the Business of the Roberts Court (Still) Business?" has just been published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Here is the abstract:
The Roberts court has long been characterized as a "probusiness" court, given the ostensible orientation of the court's Republican-appointed majority and assumptions that President Trump's appointments have magnified that orientation. But there are reasons to question this characterization. Quantitative analyses often fail to account for the relative importance of individual decisions, the broader legal context in which the court's decisions are made, or the ways in which decisions can alter or depart from preexisting legal baselines. I show that President Trump's appointments to the court have fairly consistently voted to restrain the power of administrative agencies, but they have not consistently supported outcomes that are beneficial to business. In cases involving state laws that may fragment or burden national markets, the Roberts court may actually be less sympathetic to business interests than it was prior to Trump's appointments.
The article is part of an interdisciplinary symposium edited by Lee Epstein and Rogers M. Smith on "Donald J. Trump, the Supreme Court, and American Constitutionalism." Other contributors to the symposium include Amanda Hollis-Brusky, Charles M. Cameron, Jonathan P. Kastellec, Adam Liptak, Rogers M. Smith, Gillian E. Metzger, Cristina M. Rodríguez, Olatunde Johnson, Terri Peretti, Linda Greenhouse, Vincent Phillip Muñoz, Rebecca L. Brown, Mitu Gulati, Keren Weinshall, and James L. Gibson.