Roberts’s nomination also signals a bad hair day for trial lawyers and their excessive damage claims which have so crippled business and destroyed tens of thousands of jobs. In particular Roberts is expected to support recent congressional legislation that would move class-action lawsuits from county and state courts to the federal bench. Experts anticipate an aggressive effort by the trial lawyers to gradually snipe at the Class Action Fairness Act, but Roberts is expected to uphold the congressional law.
Roberts is a genuine free-market judge, someone who will not assume that business is always guilty until proven innocent. He should land on the side of limiting damages for personal injury and product liability settlements, which hopefully will include asbestos, medical malpractice, and phony securities lawsuits. He may also be sympathetic to corporate patent-holders of intellectual property, while seeking to oppose local regulators in areas of telecom access, energy development and production, and streamlined power utilities.
Roberts may at times be at loggerheads with judges Scalia and Thomas, who inexplicably have ruled in favor of abusive damage settlements in personal injury and product liability lawsuits. But the new nominee will not be reluctant to overturn local court decisions if they provide obstacles to national economic growth and prosperity.
Undoubtedly, Roberts and the Supreme Court will be asked to rule on a number of suits concerning state taxes and regulations -- litigation that could thwart the Internet advance that has become such a mighty engine of business productivity and growth. Expect Roberts to look at issues concerning the threat of overregulation with a sharp eye. Indeed, in a general sense, many observers believe he will regard government regulation as a [ITAL] last [UNITAL] resort rather than a first judicial instinct.
Let it also be said that President Bush was true to his word. He nominated a conservative based solely on the judicial merits, a church-going Catholic father of two children who is a truly distinguished lawyer and jurist.
As a result, Judge Roberts could be the first modern economic conservative to ascend to the Court. Roberts of course knows full well that judicial change occurs slowly at the margin. But as someone who seems to believe in the importance of market forces that allow the entrepreneurial creative juices to flow, he is likely to make a huge difference.