As many focus on what former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan described as “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,” the judges, lawyers, corporate leaders and journalists who gathered at the Law Center on Oct. 2 focused not on stock market losses and congressional bailout plans, but the link between corporations and the judicial branch of government.

Greenspan, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Stephen Breyer were among the speakers at “Our Courts and Corporate Citizenship,” the third annual conference of the Sandra Day O’Connor Project on the State of the Judiciary.

The project, established in 2006, addresses issues that threaten the nation’s tradition of a fair and impartial judiciary –  million-dollar judicial election races, negative campaign advertising, unreasonably low judicial salaries and more.

This year’s conference, which Justice David Souter also attended, continued to explore these challenges while focusing on the role that corporations play in the court system – both as litigants and as citizens with a decided stake in an effective and independent judicial process.

“Corporations stand to lose large amounts if judicial independence wavers,” O’Connor said. “And there’s not total satisfaction with alternative dispute resolution either.”

She noted that businesses view the current court situation as a failure in some respects. Runaway juries, unpredictable outcomes, litigation delay, expense and possible inexpertise have caused corporations to look outside the court system to settle their disputes, she said.

Keynote speaker Greenspan credited the Constitution with providing the type of long-term economic prosperity that has given Americans the highest standard of living in the world over the last century. The rule of law – particularly, laws relating to private ownership –  reputation and trust in the word of others are critical to economic growth, he said.

“Trust will eventually re-emerge as investors dip hesitantly back into the marketplace (and) from that point, history tells us, financial and economic revival sets in,” he said. “It always has, in this society governed by that remarkable document we call the Constitution of the United States.”

Greenspan also noted that property is becoming increasingly intellectual, a topic explored during a morning panel with officials from Microsoft and Merck & Co. Other panels explored the corporate trend away from the courts; the startling pay disparities of the nation’s judges – compared to legislators and other attorneys in the public sectors; and dollar-driven judicial election races.

During a separate talk, Breyer spoke of the importance of public confidence in the court system and his recent efforts to explain the concept of judicial independence to six judges from Ghana.

“It doesn’t mean looking at a decision with a blank mind,” he said. “Being independent means you are approaching it with a mind open to persuasion.”

Meryl Chertoff, director of the O’Connor Project and adjunct professor at the Law Center, moderated the panel on comparing judicial salaries with that of lawyers and legislators.

-- Ann W. Parks, Blue & Gray Contributing Writer

(October 6, 2008)