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Atlas Croaks, Supreme Court Shrugs

Huzzah:  my seminal law review article by the above-captioned title (6 Charleston L Rev 15 (2011)) has made the

LSN: Judges (Courts) (Topic) Top Ten.

The piece deals with the Supreme Court’s “business cases” and the idea, peddled with dreary predictability at the conclusion of each Term, that we are well on our way toward a judicially engineered plutocracy. Here’s the gist of it:

Upon inspection, the notion that the Roberts Court’s jurisprudence heralds a restoration of unbridled capitalism — or, more modestly, of reliable rules of the road for commercial actors — proves untenable, if not downright absurd. It is true that the Supreme Court often rules for business. And this past Term, unlike in preceding years, those rulings have often been the work of a narrow 5-4 or 5-3 conservative majority. … However, the pattern is hardly unbroken. Moreover, and far more important, the conservative Justices’ pro-business decisions look like picking weeds in downtown Detroit or for that matter Mrs. Rand’s crumbling New York — well-meant, but unlikely to improve the neighborhood on a lasting basis.

By sheer serendipity, just ahead of me ranks a piece by Ross E. Davies (GMU School of Law and, come August, my faculty colleague), entitled “In Search of Helpful Legal Scholarship.” Atlas Croaks may or may not belong in that category, but it does contain a few fun facts and observations. A couple of random downloads would improve its ranking, though obviously not its content.