Civil Procedure & Federal Courts Blog

Call me naïve: I’m just hearing of ALEC’s “model” state legislation

Tipped by a Justia article by John Dean (and who knew John Dean was an advocate for “the 99%”?), I visited a web site called ALEC Exposed, maintained by the Center for Media and Democracy.   ALEC is the acronym for the innocuous-sounding American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded clearinghouse that for at least a decade has been “ghost writing” business-friendly legislation that is introduced into state legislatures.     

Perusing the more than 800 such “model” bills, I was quickly drawn to the category Tort Reform,  Corporate Liability, and the Rights of Injured Americans.  Yep, there they were – some 68 bills with familiar double-speak “tort reform” titles like "Class Actions Improvements Act,"  "Private Enforcement of Consumer Protection Statutes," and "Noneconomic Damage Awards Act." 

--PHM

Cheers

My guest month has drawn to a close; thanks for reading me.  Contest winner (although I had to break a tie): "Perhaps the adage about hard cases making bad law should be revised to cover easy cases."  Burnham v. Superior Court of California, 495 U.S. 604, 640 (1990) (Stevens, J., concurring). 

--Brendan Maher