The Groups Know What They’re Getting

Oddly enough, Republican interest groups aren’t buying the spin of the GOP’s talking points and particularly egregious hacks that nothing can really be inferred from his extremely conservative voting record. Taking a look at his remarkably consistent record of narrow constructions of statutes protecting workers, investors, the environment, and civil rights, “[m]ajor business groups are preparing to spend millions of dollars to lobby on his behalf”. You can see why:

His extensive paper trail of 15 years of opinions reveals a jurist deeply skeptical of claims against large corporations. A review of dozens of business cases in which Judge Alito has written majority or dissenting opinions or cast the decisive vote shows that, with few exceptions, he has sided with employers over employees in discrimination lawsuits and in favor of corporations over investors in securities fraud cases.

Judge Alito, President Bush’s choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, cast the decisive vote in a case involving a major steel company, and in another involving a large chemical maker, over environmentalists in pollution cases.

He has set aside punitive damages in some cases and reduced them in others; has handed down dissents that, if they became law, would impose higher burdens for workers to successfully sue their employers for discrimination; and has routinely upheld restrictive arbitration clauses that have limited the remedies available to plaintiffs. (In a rare instance of setting aside an arbitration decision, he reversed an arbitration panel that had ordered the reinstatement of an intoxicated seaman on a moored oil tanker against the wishes of his employer, Exxon.)

[…]

The judge’s reputation over the last 15 years was such that corporate lawyers relished the prospect of his participation in cases, while plaintiff’s lawyers hoped to avoid him.

“We’re always happy to see Judge Alito on the panel,” said Robert C. Heim, the head of the litigation department at Dechert, a large law firm based in Philadelphia that represents some of the nation’s largest corporations, typically facing accusations of antitrust, securities or corporate law violations. “He’s generally a good judge for the cases we argue because we generally argue that the state of law does not favor the case that the plaintiffs are making and he’s generally very receptive to that. He doesn’t give an expansive reading to antitrust laws or securities laws.”

Officials at the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce said that as they combed through his record, they had been favorably impressed with what they had learned.

“He has come down on a host of issues in a way that the business community would prefer,” said Robin Conrad, senior vice president of the National Chamber Litigation Center, the legal arm of the United States Chamber of Commerce, who has been researching Judge Alito’s opinions. “This is not a guy who is going to go off the reservation.”

Similarly, social conservative groups are sticking with the reputation Alito had among his supporters before Monday morning, and drawing the appropriate inferences from his Casey dissent. Obviously, we should believe them, particularly given that the few people suddenly–in a classic confirmation conversion–arguing that Alito is not a staunch Federalist Society conservative have yet to actually supply any evidence.

…and Jay Sekulo, head of Pat Robertson’s litigation outfit, also doesn’t seem to have received the instructions to pretend to enthusasitically support Alito because he’ll be the next David Souter:

Jay Sekulow, President of the ultra-conservative American Center for Law and Justice, has noted that “President Bush promised that he would nominate Justices in the mold of Justices Scalia and Thomas” and announced that “In choosing Judge Alito for the high court, President Bush has done just that.”

Hey, when he’s right, he’s right…