Might John G. Roberts Jr. be the first supply-sider to sit on the Supreme Court? Well, not exactly, but the thought is not as far fetched as some might initially think.
C. Boyden Gray, the key organizer of a business coalition that weighed in on the White House nominating process, told me Roberts believes that “government intrusion should be limited.” In other words, in the economic area, Roberts is “likely to take the view that government should get out of the way and not pick the winners and losers; that government should work to level the playing field and trust markets to get the job done.”
Gray, who is also a former lawyer for George H. W. Bush, created an infrastructure to offset the special-interest groups on the left. He was asked to do this by Sen. Trent Lott, with a particular view toward representing business in judicial choices. “Judicial appointments are not all about social issues,” he says, “nor should they be.” He’s right. Believe it or not, roughly 40 percent of Supreme Court cases are now related to business and the economy.
Gray’s Committee for Justice includes Stan Anderson, the legal advisor to the Chamber of Commerce, John Engler, the president of the National Association of Manufacturers, Frank Keating, president of the American Council of Life Insurers, and Connie Mack, the former Senator and pro-growth advocate. This is the first time in anyone’s memory that business has entered the judicial fray, and Judge Roberts was their first choice.
Keating, who is also the former Oklahoma governor and federal prosecutor, told me Roberts believes that “the engine of commerce comes from individual creativity,” and that Roberts “is likely to encourage enterprise through the creativity and genius of individual men and women to produce the next generation of jobs and growth.”
This is a far cry from the Supreme Court of the past 70 years. As Mark Levin writes in his bestselling book Men in Black, the Court has so expanded the commerce clause that it has helped create a huge regulatory state where activist judges have seized private property, taken over school systems and prisons, interceded in private-sector hiring and firing practices, ordered farm quotas and property-tax increases, and expelled God, prayer, and the Ten Commandments from the public square. Levin calls this “socialism from the bench.” However, rather than the regulatory state, Roberts is likely to choose private property and the economic-freedom right of individuals.