With the U.S. Supreme Court opening its 2009-2010 term Monday, a recurring theme in the media coverage was the prominence of business cases. Bloomberg, for example, reports, “Companies Seek Turnaround as Supreme Court Returns”:

[The] term will be heavy on business cases, as companies aim to rebound after a year of high court setbacks.

The nine-month term that started today will affect the fate of imprisoned former Hollinger International Inc. Chairman Conrad Black, the accounting oversight board set up by the Sarbanes-Oxley law and the sales of professional football team caps. The justices also will consider limiting investor lawsuits and making it harder to get a patent covering business methods.

More…

• New York Times, “New Court Term May Give Hints to Views on Regulating Business”
• Washington Post, “High Court Showdown: Dogs, Guns and Sexual Predators”
• Blog of the Legal Times, “New Term, New Justice for Supreme Court.”
• Wall Street Journal (blog), “Is the US Supreme Court Losing its Relevance?
• New York Times, “The Case of the Plummeting Supreme Court Docket”
• NPR, “A Changed Court Faces Key Decisions In New Term” Excerpt:

There are many business cases before the court. One tests whether a Wall Street formula for buying and selling commodities can be patented; another tests whether the people who run mutual funds can charge higher fees to individual clients than to institutional investors like pension funds. And there’s a case testing whether the law enacted in the aftermath of the Enron scandal — to monitor public companies’ accounting — is constitutional.

UPDATE (9:05 a.m.): You know, there aren’t THAT many business cases. Maybe this is just a standard storyline that’s trotted out every October: “Business cases dominate court.” Whether they really dominate or not. And in some respects, the major case with business implications — Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board — is not a business case per se, but a case about separation of powers and delegation of authority.

The contributors to the Point of Law legal blog have been analyzing Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s writings and judicial record, providing some insight into how she would rule as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. James Copland, Director of the Center for Legal Policy at the Manhattan Institute — sponsor of the website — recently added to a dicussion of her views on tort reform.

A 1996 Suffolk University Law Review article by her suggest Sotomayor is skeptical of experts, “hired hands,” used in personal injury litigation. However, she also criticized legislative efforts to bring rationality to the civil justice system by introducing caps on economic damage awards. In our view, that’s an entirely appropriate policy to ensure a consistent application of the law and end capricious, outrageous jury awards that serve as a “tort tax” on business and the economy. Sotomayor describes such tort reforms as “overreactions that undermine the principles of our judicial system.”

Copland:

Even if Judge Sotomayor’s comments are read merely to express policy disagreement, they are troubling. If her notion is even stronger — that tort reforms such as the Common Sense Product Liability Legal Reform Act of 1996 are in fact unconstitutional — then I agree with Ted [Frank's] conclusion that her “argument is not just a statement of judicial activism, it’s a disturbing statement of judicial supremacy over the other branches of government.” Given the strength of her claims — that such laws “undermine the principles of our judicial system” and are “inconsistent with the premise of the jury system” — the less charitable reading seems more than plausible. In any event, I echo Ted’s “hope [that] someone on the Senate Judiciary Committee inquires into it.”

Point of Law has a category devoted to the Sotomayor nomination here. A good colloquy and useful information for those wondering how her views might affect business and the economy.

A round-up of commentary and reporting on President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing on the implications for business and business law…

Walter Olson of the Manhattan Institute has a dispassionate, analytical piece at Overlawyered.com, “Obama’s ‘Wise Latina’“:

Issues of business law don’t come across as Sotomayor’s great passion one way or the other, so it’s hard to know what all this portends for the high court’s direction on business issues should she be confirmed. As Home Depot‘s Bernard Marcus and others have pointed out, for all of David Souter’s predictable role on the court’s liberal side in most high-profile cases, he in fact steered to middle-of-the-road, hard-to-characterize views on many issues of litigation, liability and procedure, either as a swing vote or as the author of opinions. (Two key issues to watch: what sort of constitutional restraints, if any, there are on punitive damages, and how much scrutiny judges should give to initial pleadings to determine whether a federal lawsuit ought to go forward.)

Some of her backers say they expect that Sotomayor will emerge as a liberal in the less than fiery, relatively “legalistic” Ginsburg/Breyer mold. Even assuming that happens, some outcomes will soon change in a direction most businesses will find adverse. And in coming weeks, both friends and foes will be going over her published opinions–some with hope, others with dread–for clues to whether she might form the nucleus of some future new and more seriously left-wing faction on the court.

Also reporting on Sotomayor and business was Nathan Koppel at the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog, “Sotomayor and Business: ‘No Reason . . . to be Concerned’“:

The judge, for example, has sided with defendants in cases involving the standards that govern when cases can be brought as a class actions and the extent to which plaintiffs’ claims can be preempted by more defense-friendly federal or international laws.

“There is no reason for the business community to be concerned,” says Lauren Rosenblum Goldman, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP. The judge has “ruled in favor of preemption about half of the times” that the issue has been presented to her, she says.

Two cases that went before the Second Circuit of Appeals on which Judge Sotomayor sits were certainly high-profile ones that concerned business; the National Association of Manufacturers was involved through filing of amicus briefs.

(continue reading…)

The New York Times has the news about the President’s 10:15 a.m. announcement, “Obama Chooses Sotomayor for Supreme Court Nominee”

The National Journal’s always excellent legal reporter, Stuart Taylor, wrote a critical column about her in the latest issue, “Identity Politics And Sotomayor.” The subhed is “The judge’s thinking is representative of the Democratic Party’s powerful identity-politics wing.”