SCOTUS Nominee Roberts -> Former Energy Industry Lobbyist

http://courtinginfluence.net/nominee.php?nominee_id=55

http://courtinginfluence.net/stories.php?id=7

"Another Bush judicial appointee with experience representing the mining industry is John G. Roberts, Jr., a former colleague of George Miller's at the Hogan & Hartson law and lobbying firm. Roberts was one of the co-authors of Miller’s amicus brief on behalf of the National Mining Association’s challenge to the government ban on ‘mountaintop removal’. In 2003, Roberts was confirmed to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where earlier this year he ruled against environmentalists who were pushing for more restrictive government regulations of copper smelters--many of whom are members of the National Mining Association that Roberts once represented. As a lobbyist in the 1990s, Roberts worked on behalf of the peanut industry, pushing federal legislation that maintained government subsidies which the GAO estimated cost consumers $500 million a year. Agricultural and mining interests are often involved in regulatory cases that come before the DC Circuit Court where Roberts now sits."

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I am so not surprised.

* In April 2000, Washington DC lawyer John Roberts filed an amicus brief on behalf of the National Mining Association in the federal 4th Circuit Court to block a lawsuit filed by West Virginia citizens opposed to the coal industry's destructive "mountaintop removal" practice. Two years later, Roberts was nominated by President Bush and confirmed to the powerful DC Circuit Court of Appeals. In April 2004, as a judge on that court, Roberts ruled against environmentalists who were pushing for more restrictive government regulations over copper smelters--many of whose owners are members of the National Mining Association--that emit toxic lead and arsenic pollutants.

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=95867

Clearly a judicial activist.....

In the first article, Roberts offered his view of the Takings Clause, which requires that the government give “just compensation” for takings of “private property.” Roberts claimed that courts trying to ascertain its meaning, “have not been significantly aided by the
words of the clause, which are incapable of being given simple, clear-cut meaning… Indeed, the very phrase ‘just compensation’ suggests that the language of the clause must be informed by changing norms of justice." After rejecting on various grounds several interpretations of the clause traditionally used by courts – i.e. physical intrusion onto an owner’s property as anachronistic in a largely non-agrarian society, “noxious use” as too value-laden, and Justice Holmes’ 1922 “diminution of value” test as too vague, Roberts argued for a “constrained” model based on a utility-based test proposed by Professor Frank Michelman. Under that model, parties made unwhole or “insecure” by regulation should be compensated accordingly.

“The Takings Clause,” Developments in the Law – Zoning, 91 Harvard Law Review 1462, 1464 (1978).

In his second article, Roberts took on the Contract Clause, which provides that, “No stateshall… pass any… law impairing the obligation of contracts.” Roberts argued that this clause should be interpreted to protect corporations from legislation that might increase
their obligations to their workers, such as pension protection, and not, as Justice Brennan had asserted, to protect individuals from decisions by states that nullified rights by reneging on contracts. Roberts criticized Justice Brennan’s plain language interpretation
of the Contract Clause, arguing instead that, “Constitutional protections, however, should not depend merely on a strict construction that may allow ‘technicalities of form to dictate consequences of substance.’”42 Here, as in his Takings Clause article, Roberts seems unafraid to reject a “strict construction” approach to constitutional interpretation to reach results that favor corporations and wealthy property owners. In both articles, Roberts’ non-literal interpretation of the clause seems to fly in the face of President Bush’s pledge to nominate judges who would strictly interpret the law, not make it.

Comment, “Contract Clause – Legislative Alteration of Private Pension Agreements,” 92 Harvard Law Review 86 (1978).

http://www.independentjudiciary.com/resources/docs/John_Roberts_Report.pdf