We asked some of the leading lights of the Supreme Court bar to assess the year just passed and to look ahead to where the justices might take the country in the year to come. Cases on the docket have the potential to reshape securities and civil rights law and relations between the branches of government.
“The Court has a number of interesting cases on the docket for 2014. But no case will be more closely watched by the business community than Halliburton v. Erica P. John Fund, the case on the validity of the fraud-on-the-market presumption in securities class actions. Depending on the outcome, it could be the most significant securities case in a generation.”
—Kannon Shanmugam, head of Williams & Connolly’s Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice.
“What is often overlooked about the Roberts Court is that it is the most pro-business Supreme Court since the mid-1930s. In cases in many diverse areas—limiting class action suits, enforcing arbitration agreements, restricting liability of pharmaceutical companies, preventing suits against business under the Alien Tort Statute, narrowing employment discrimination laws—this court has protected business at the expense of employees, consumers and all of us.”
—Erwin Chemerinsky, dean, University of California, Irvine School of Law.
