On my fifth day in office, after I was sworn in, I found myself taking part in the confirmation hearings for now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor. And now almost exactly one year into my term I will be taking part in the confirmation hearings for Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

In the Sotomayor hearings, I was one of the few non-lawyers in the room, but I didn’t mind.

You see, I did some research, and it turns out that most Minnesotans aren’t lawyers, either.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t directly affected every day by what happens on the Supreme Court, and in our legal system.

I don’t think you need to be a lawyer to recognize that the Roberts Court has, consistently and intentionally, protected and promoted the interests of the powerful over those of individual Americans.

And you certainly don’t need to be a lawyer to understand what that means for the working people who are losing their rights, one 5-4 decision at a time.

Justice Souter once said: “The first lesson, simple as it is, is that whatever court we’re in, whatever we are doing, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected.”

It’s easy to feel disconnected from cases where the Court is balancing individual rights with compelling state interest.  Even though the government has awesome power – enough to take away your freedom, or even your life – the degree to which that power is deemed to supersede your individual rights doesn’t really enter into the daily lives of most Americans.

But there’s more than one kind of power.

If you have a credit card, if you watch TV, if you file insurance claims, if you work – in other words, if you participate in American daily life at all – then you interact with corporations that are more powerful than you are.

The degree to which those corporations’ rights are protected over yours, well, that’s extremely relevant to your life.

And in case after case after case, the Roberts Court has put not just a thumb, but a fist, on the scale in favor of those corporations.

In Citizens United, the Roberts Court overstepped its procedural bounds so that it could graciously provide corporations with First Amendment rights and, by the way, open the door to foreign entities deciding our elections.

But, again, as bad a piece of jurisprudence as that decision was, even worse could be the ramifications it will have on the lives of real people.

Well into the 1960s, oil companies didn’t want to stop putting lead in gasoline despite the fact that they knew how dangerous it was.

But Congress passed the Clean Air Act anyway.  And the percentage of children with elevated levels of lead in their blood dropped 84 per cent over the next quarter century.

And around that same time, our car companies still didn’t want to put seat belts in cars, even though they knew it would save lives.  
 
But Congress passed the Motor Vehicle Safety Act anyway.  And by the year 2000, the fatality rate from car accidents had dropped 71 per cent.

Both laws passed just a couple of months before midterm elections.

Does anybody think either would have stood a chance if Standard Oil and GM had been able to spend millions of dollars in those campaigns?

It is the struggle of every Minnesotan to earn a fair wage at a job that treats them well.  To live their lives free of corporate intrusions into their privacy.  To breathe clean air and drink clean water.  And to find justice when they’re wronged.

I know how important it is that our legal system support individuals in that struggle.  But too many people do not.  And we have to change that.

Ordinary Minnesotans have to understand what’s at stake for them in all this.  And that means someone has to bring them into the debate. This is what I hope to accomplish in the upcoming Supreme Court nomination hearings of Solicitor General Elena Kagan.