NEW YORK TIMES: …Americans have grown substantially more populist in their outlook over the last 15 years, according to some measures of public opinion, like whether they are satisfied with “the size and influence of major corporations,” and whether the government should “redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich.” Indeed, if the presidential primaries are any indication, there is perhaps no more potent force in American politics today than economic populism…
At the same time, some argue that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has become perhaps the most business-friendly court in recent history. A 2013 study by Lee Epstein of Washington University in St. Louis, William M. Landes of the University of Chicago Law School and Judge Richard A. Posner of the federal appeals court in Chicago ranked justices according to their rulings in cases involving business. The findings, which Ms. Epstein and Mr. Landes updated through the 2014-15 term for this article, show that six of the 10 most business-friendly justices since 1946 sat on the Supreme Court at the time of Justice Scalia’s death…
By the 1970s, however, leading Democratic intellectuals like John Kenneth Galbraith were arguing that a frontal attack on big business was passé and that the government’s focus should be maximizing economic growth instead. These intellectuals proposed that liberals should make their peace with large corporations and simply oversee them as if they were giant utility companies… (more)
