Georgetown Law Alumni Magazine - Res Ipsa Loquitur
Spring/Summer 2009 - Online Volume 1
Lectures and Events
Alan Greenspan on the Markets and the Courts
In the midst of what former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,” a group of judges, lawyers, corporate leaders and journalists gathered at Georgetown Law on October 2 to talk business. Yet their discussions focused not on stock market losses and congressional bailout plans but the link between corporations and the third branch of government — the judiciary.
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 was established in 2006 to address issues that threaten our nation’s tradition of a fair and impartial judiciary — million-dollar judicial election races, negative campaign advertising, low judicial salaries and more.
This year’s conference, which was also attended by Justice David Souter, focused on the role that corporations play in the court system — both as litigants and as citizens having a stake in an effective and independent judicial process.
“Corporations stand to lose large amounts if judicial independence wavers,” O’Connor said. Runaway juries, unpredictable outcomes, litigation delay and high expenses have caused corporations to look for other ways to settle their disputes, she noted — “and there’s not total satisfaction with alternative dispute resolution either.”
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.
“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.”
Justice Stephen 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.”
Other speakers included Justice Randy Holland of the Delaware Supreme Court; Judge D. Brock Hornby of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine; Bradford Smith, general counsel for Microsoft; Theodore Olson of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher; Adam Liptak and Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times; Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge; and Meryl J. Chertoff, director of the O’Connor Project.
