Chief Justice John Roberts Is Carrying Out Corporate America’s Long-Term Plan Perfectly
In 2005, Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court because the business lobby believed he would turn the court into a corporate weapon — and that's precisely what he has been doing ever since.
US president Donald Trump shakes hands with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts before the State of the Union address in the House chamber on February 4, 2020 in Washington, DC. Leah Millis-Pool / Getty
This week, the Supreme Court dutifully handed another victory to the US Chamber of Commerce, siding with the corporate lobbying group by invalidating the law that protected one of the nation’s chief financial regulators from White House meddling. It was another step toward making the Roberts Court the most corporate-compliant judicial body in modern American history.
In the ruling, the court struck down provisions that said a president could only fire the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for cause. The decision did preserve the agency’s right to exist, but as dissenting justice Elena Kagan put it, the ruling “wipes out a feature of that agency its creators thought fundamental to its mission — a measure of independence from political pressure.”
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren put it more bluntly, saying the Roberts Court “just handed over more power to Wall Street’s army of lawyers and lobbyists to push out a director who fights for the American people.”
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