midnight in New York F R O M T H E PA G E S O F
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2015
Right Divided, Disciplined Left Steered Justices WASHINGTON — The series of liberal decisions delivered by the Supreme Court this term was the product of discipline on the left side of the court and disarray on the right. In case after case, including blockbusters on same-sex marriage and President Obama’s health care law, the court’s four-member liberal wing managed to pick off one or more votes from the court’s five conservative justices. They did this in large part through rigorous bloc voting, making the term that concluded Monday the most liberal one since the Warren court in the late 1960s. “The most interesting thing about this term is the acceleration of a longterm trend of disagreement among the Republican-appointed judges, while the Democratic-appointed judges continue to march in lock step,” said Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago. Many analysts credit the leadership of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the senior member of the liberal justices, for leveraging their four votes. “We have made a concerted effort to speak with one voice in important cases,” she said last year. The court’s conservatives, by contrast, were often splintered, issuing separate opinions even when they agreed on the outcome. The conservative justices, for instance, produced more than 40 dissenting opinions, the liberals just 13. The term was not uniformly liberal, of course. On Monday alone, the court ruled against death row inmates in a case on lethal injections and against the Obama administration in a case on environmental regulations. Nor is the court remotely as liberal as the Warren court, which issued a far greater percentage of liberal decisions, often unanimously. David A. Strauss, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said the cases the court agreed to hear this past term might have created a misperception about how liberal it has become. “It’s still a conservative court — just not as conservative as some had hoped and some had feared,” he said. ADAM LIPTAK
© 2015 The New York Times
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Greece Misses Crucial Debt Payment ATHENS — Greece missed a crucial debt payment to the International Monetary Fund, the fund said early Wednesday, deepening a crisis that has haunted world leaders and financial markets over the past week. The development came as Greece’s European creditors each rejected an 11th-hour attempt by Athens to extend the international bailout program. Greece is not technically in default, but missing the payment of about $1.7 billion is yet another unmistakable warning that the country will probably be unable to meet its obligations in coming weeks to its bond holders and to the European Central Bank. That might make the bank, a chief creditor, less willing to continue emergency loans. By declaring Greece in arrears, the I.M.F. avoided using the term “default.” But Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, said Tuesday night that Greece was effectively in default and could now face even tougher conditions for a new aid
package. “I think the fact of the matter is that Greece is in default or will be in default tomorrow morning on the I.M.F. and also, I believe, on a loan to their own central bank,” Dijsselbloem told CNBC. “But they will be in default, and I don’t think I can alter that in the short term.” With just hours to go before the deadline for the payment, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, had asked the other nations that use the euro to provide another bailout that could buy Athens time to renegotiate its crippling debt load. Finance ministers of those countries discussed the proposal on Tuesday night and left open the possibility that Greece could win a new aid package, but dashed any hopes Athens had for immediate action. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had said earlier in the day that no deal with Tsipras’s government could be negotiated until after a referendum on Sunday in which Greeks will be asked to accept or reject an offer made
last week by Greece’s creditors. Greece joins the roster of countries that have missed payments to the I.M.F. Also on that list: Zimbabwe, Sudan and Somalia. Greece becomes the first developed country to miss a payment, and it was the largest missed payment in the fund’s history. Sudan still owes about $1.4 billion from loans acquired in the 1980s, according to the fund. Other countries that have fallen behind more recently include Iraq, Bosnia and Afghanistan. All three eventually settled their obligations to the fund. Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said delinquency would put Greece in ignoble company. “They are joining countries we would normally regard as failed and failing states,” Kirkegaard said. The I.M.F. declined to comment on whether it expected Greece to make the payment it just missed sometime in the future. JIM YARDLEY and JAMES KANTER
U.S. Chamber Undermines Antismoking Measures KIEV, Ukraine — A parliamentary hearing was convened here in March to consider an odd remnant of Ukraine’s corrupt, pre-revolutionary government. Three years ago, Ukraine filed an international legal challenge against Australia, over Australia’s right to enact antismoking laws on its own soil. To a number of lawmakers, the case seemed absurd, and they wanted to investigate why it was even being pursued. When it came time to defend the tobacco industry, Taras Kachka spoke up. He argued that several “fantastic tobacco companies” had bought up Soviet-era factories and modernized them. It was in Ukraine’s national interest, he said, to support investors in the country, even though they do not sell tobacco to Australia. Kachka was not a tobacco lobbyist or factory owner. He was the head of a Ukrainian affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
America’s largest trade group. From Ukraine to Uruguay, Moldova to the Philippines, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its foreign affiliates have become the hammer for the tobacco industry, engaging in a worldwide effort to fight antismoking laws of all kinds, according to interviews with government ministers, lobbyists, lawmakers and public health groups. Facing a wave of new legislation around the world, the tobacco lobby has turned for help to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with the weight of American business behind it. While the chamber’s global tobacco lobbying has been largely hidden from public view, its influence has been widely felt. Letters, emails and other documents from foreign governments, the chamber’s affiliates and antismoking groups show how the chamber has embraced the challenge, undertaking a three-pronged strategy in its
global campaign to advance the interests of the tobacco industry. In the capitals of far-flung nations, the chamber lobbies alongside its foreign affiliates to beat back antismoking laws. In trade forums, the chamber pits countries against one another, as in the Ukraine case. And in Washington, Thomas J. Donohue, the chief executive of the chamber, has personally taken part in lobbying to defend the ability of the tobacco industry to sue under future international treaties, notably the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “They represent the interests of the tobacco industry,” said Dr. Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, who oversees the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a global anti-smoking treaty that took effect in 2005. “They are putting their feet everywhere where there are stronger regulations coming up.” DANNY HAKIM