Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he’s going to make sure the subject of oil and the courts comes up in Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, which begin next week. The Hill reported Saturday:

The chairman, who will guide the confirmation hearing, pointed to controversial cases slashing a damages award in the 1989 Exxon-Valdez spill incident, an environmental disaster that’s now been dwarfed by the Gulf spill.

“Turning back the award in the Exxon-Valdez, I wonder if the Supreme Court would do that today as they watch what’s happening in the Gulf,” Leahy said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program, to air this weekend.

“It wasn’t the liberals who said that Exxon shouldn’t have to pay the amount that a jury gave the people of Alaska for their oil spill,” the Vermont senator added later, critiquing conservative judges’ decisions in some cases.

We, too, wonder if the current Supreme Court’s allegiance to corporate interests would lead it to give the same sort of gift to BP as it did to Exxon in 2008, if damage claims from BP’s devastating spill make their way to the high court. In fact, the pro-corporate reflexes that led to the Court to halve a jury’s award to the Exxon spill’s victims are exactly what we’d like Kagan to address in the upcoming hearings.

Take a look at the 20 questions we’ve drafted for Kagan . We’re glad to hear that a few of them may be asked.