Exxon's legal guardians

The Supreme Court justices concocted legal precedent on the fly in a decision that defended the profits of oil giant ExxonMobil.

Socialist Worker, July 3, 2008

The Exxon Valdez gushed at least 11 million gallons of crude oil over 1,300 miles of unspoiled Alaskan coastline

BEFORE CLINCHING the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Barack Obama contrasted his vision for the future role of the U.S. Supreme Court to rival John McCain's, arguing that the current Court's consistent bias in favor of "the powerful against the powerless" has allowed corporate and government interests to ride roughshod over "what ordinary people are going through."

In that populist vein, Obama went on to describe as his models for Supreme Court appointments Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter--who he claimed are "people on the bench who have enough empathy, enough feeling" for those trampled on by Corporate America.

Once securely anointed in June, Obama immediately lost interest in ordinary people and began panting for corporate support. Perhaps for this reason, he felt no need to criticize the Court for its June 25 ruling on behalf of ExxonMobil that reduced to a mere pittance the amount in punitive damages that the most profitable corporation in history owes to the nearly 33,000 Alaskan fishermen, cannery workers and Natives whose livelihoods were destroyed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, the worst environmental disaster in corporate history.

Souter himself penned the decision, which pronounced, "The punitive damages award against Exxon was excessive as a matter of maritime common law." Souter did not mention that maritime common law was virtually nonexistent, but was being invented on the fly by the current Supreme Court.

ExxonMobil had based its maritime appeal solely on an obscure 1818 decision known as "the Amiable Nancy," in which the Court ruled that a privateer ship's owners were not liable for punitive damages stemming from a robbery by a sailor in its employ. During questioning, Ginsburg--who dissented in the current ruling--noted that it was "an exaggeration to call it a long line of settled decisions in maritime law" as Exxon claimed, apparently to no avail.

Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from the case because he owns ExxonMobil stocks worth between $100,000 and $250,000, according to 2006 financial statements. But the court remained stacked with Exxon sympathizers.

"So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive damages awards such as this?" Chief Justice John Roberts asked in exasperation during questioning. When the plaintiffs' lawyer, Jeffrey Fisher, noted that Exxon should not benefit from an argument its legal team had not made, Justice Antonin Scalia retorted, "They don't have to make every tiny little argument."

Continued . . .