Elizabeth Warren Unglued

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Is there a more strident, less appealing, more unpleasant senator? I do not believe there is. And as for re-writing history, well, Elizabeth Warren just has no peer. Bloomberg informs readers that Warren is using a poorly done study to criticize the Supreme Court.

Elizabeth Warren, Occupy Wall Street’s favorite senator, is getting another round of praise from liberals for a speech she gave at the AFL-CIO convention on Sept. 8. It’s one more reason the Massachusetts Democrat, just elected in November, is being mentioned as a future presidential contender.

Like a lot of politicians working friendly crowds, Warren was hyperbolic. Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker, she said, had “declared war on working families by ripping the guts out of collective-bargaining agreements.” In fact, Walker’s law gives Wisconsin public-sector workers more collective-bargaining privileges than federal employees have.

The comment that has drawn the most approbation was an attack on “the increasing corporate capture of the federal courts.” Citing “a recent study” (almost certainly this one), she said: “The five conservative justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court are in the top 10 most pro-corporate justices in a half-century — and Justices Alito and Roberts are numbers one and two — the most anti-consumer in this entire time. The Chamber of Commerce is now a major player in the Supreme Court, and its win rate has risen to 70 percent of all cases it supports. Follow this pro-corporate trend to its logical conclusion, and sooner or later you’ll end up with a Supreme Court that functions as a wholly owned subsidiary of big business.”

Flawed Thinking

The study doesn’t tell us what Warren thinks it does, or anything we should care about. It gives equal weight to every vote by a justice, even though decisions plainly vary in importance for businesses, and for everyone else. It ignores decisions that matter a great deal for businesses but don’t have business litigants.