June 26, 2008 9:36 AM

John Grisham, Exxon, and Guns

I have been reading Grisham's latest best seller, The Appeal. It is all about getting the court you want rather than justice.

This point is well illustrated by two of this week's big Supreme Court decisions - yesterday's gift of $2 billion to Exxon and today's decision declaring, for the first time, that the 2nd Amendment gives individuals the right to bear arms. Neither decision would have happened without the changes in the court in recent years. Elections matter and they matter for decades due to court appointments.

Since the Exxon Valdez environmental disaster in 1989, the two Bush presidents have appointed four new justices - Souter, Thomas, Roberts and Alito. Alito recused himself from the vote because he owns Exxon stock! The other three all voted to limit Exxon's penalties far below that found by a jury and by the appellate court. The Supreme Court in place at the time of the disaster would almost certainly not have cut the award.

But of course, this is precisely why Exxon has litigated rather than paid for nearly twenty years - the Court keeps friendlier and not by accident but by design. If Al Gore has become president in 2001 or John Kerry in 2005, Exxon would have found it better to have settled and paid up.

Today's first in history gun ruling is also all about getting the court you want. Gun ownership advocates had been waiting for decades to have a friendly court, and finally got one with George W. Bush's appointments, and fast tracked it all the way to the Supreme Court. The National Rifle Association is among the very largest of independent players in electoral politics - joined at the hip with the Republican Party - and today they got their grandest dream fulfilled.