Justice Kagan Interview

You can find an interview with Justice Kagan here.  

 

At around 20:52 you can see her speaking about Italian Colors and then whether this is a pro-business Supreme Court.

Note the caveat then the description and what looks like a "yes".  She says:

"None of us decide cases based on who the parties are.  Its not like the Chamber of Commerce appears in court and you say I like the Chamber of Commerce...or a consumer appears in court and you say I like consumers or they need more protection or they don't.  I mean, I think people look at the individual cases before them.  But I do think in a number of cases with respect to a number of areas of law there is a majority of the court that has a set of legal views that, you know, provide some significant relief from both federal and state regulation to businesses.  So if you look at just even the last couple of weeks of the term there were a couple of cases in which the Court very restrictively read anti-discrimination laws, made it harder to bring anti-discrimination suits.  There was another case where the Court made it harder for local governments to put conditions on development permits or to do environmental mitigation of some kinds.  There was another case where people made it -- where the Court made  it -- much harder for injured plaintiffs who have had terrible reactions to various kinds of pharmaceutical drugs to sue for injury.  So I think there were a number of cases where the Court made it more difficult for injured persons to come to court and to use federal and state law to hold business to account for injuries that they've done."

At 31.09 Toobin asks her about public opinion's effect on the Court - do they read polls?  Her answer, not really any more enlightening than you'd think it would be:

"I don't think we read polls like that and I don't think polls influence what we do, but you know, on the other hand, we live in a world and I think...all of us are products of that world and understand things that are going on with it.  And I think it would just not be right to say that the trends in what people think and societal attitudes don't affect what the Court does."

ADL