The head of Akin Gump’s litigation practice, Thomas Goldstein, says an Obama presidency has the potential to dramatically change the legal landscape; the only question is how. “The country is almost certainly headed in a new direction,” says Goldstein, an Obama supporter, “but it’s one that has a lot of mysteries to it.”
Among them: the shifting balance of power between the plaintiff’s bar and business interests within a heavily Democratic Congress. “The business community’s ability to wield influence is a very open question,” he says. “The environment is much more favorable to consumer groups and the plaintiff’s bar than it has been in at least a decade.”
A further question: the extent to which President-elect Obama would roll back the Bush administration’s expansion of executive power. “It will be reigned in and the question is by how much … either to regain international stature, or improve relationships with Congress, or achieve better results in the courts,” says Goldstein, who doesn’t expect to see any radical shift. “He needs that authority, and every president claims that it’s just an issue of being more measured in those assertions.”
As for judicial picks, Goldstein says Obama has offered few clues about his likely approach. Will he set out to reshape the judiciary “in a mirror image of what President Bush did with conservatives”; or will he pursue a “more middle ground approach like President Clinton, never fully investing himself in these issues?”
Goldstein says that with retirements looming from the liberal wing of the Supreme Court, the court could end up tilting more to the right. “When Justice Stevens goes, the leader on the left of the court will be gone and he’s a person who has earned great respect from the conservative side,” he says. “That will be a significant loss that can’t just be overcome by any other member.”
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