Corporate America has scored a hat-trick in the US Supreme Court, winning a trio of big cases that could substantially reduce the amount of cripplingly costly investor litigation faced by any company that lists on US soil.

This was exactly what President George W. Bush wanted. Faced with growing concern about how litigation costs are burdening the competitiveness of US markets, he did what only a president can do to stop it: packed the country’s top court with business-friendly conservatives such as John Roberts, the new chief justice, a former corporate lawyer, and Samuel Alito, a hardline conservative who replaced the inconsistently pro-corporate Sandra Day O’Connor.