Hypocrisy on the Courts: The Exxon Decision

Today's Exxon decision at the Supreme Court - with Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy joining Souter's majority opinion - gives liberals a chance to show that the Right doesn’t believe their own propaganda about the Courts. All that matters for them is who wins and who loses: Gays lose. Women wanting abortions lose. Religious minorities lose. But Big Oil wins.

When the people, through the legislature, take away women’s reproductive rights or the rights of gay and lesbian Americans, the Right wants courts to stay out of it. “Let the people decide!" they demand. "We don’t want activist judges legislating from the bench! These are questions left to the legislature!”

But when the people, through a jury, punish large corporations for their outrageous and dangerous conduct, wise judges must step in and impose limits on these out-of-control juries. Let the judges decide! If the legislature declines to rein in punitive damages awards, then it is up to the courts to do it.

And, although there are many ways the Court could do this -- by fixed dollar amount, by percentage of the defendant’s net worth, by any number of ratios to the compensatory damages -- it’s up to the Supreme Court to decide what approach to take: a ratio. And it’s apparently also up to the Court to determine the exact limit to impose: a 1 : 1 ratio.

Assuming John McCain does not express disagreement with today’s opinion, I’d love to ask him to define “legislating from the bench” and why this case isn’t the perfect example of what he routinely and vociferously condemns. Why does he want courts to step in to protect the mightiest of corporate behemoths, but to stay out when individual rights are at stake?