legal judic bak

<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">legaljudic1020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">COURTS 2 1/17</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">capt 918</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see ct judic capt takeover mcconn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SEE RULE OF LAW</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SEE BALANCE OF POWER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SEE AUTHORITARIAN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see LEGAL SUPPRESSION</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SEE LIE POWER ANY MEANS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">html teles Comparative</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see also judicial tag (orphan 315) legal tag</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">important source of moderation, eg&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/fracking/two-small-towns-win-huge-legal-case-fracking-will-many-others-follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NY court</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see Jud Conf Network, RAGA tort reform, defund the left</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"rule of law"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/william-barrs-bogus-voter-fraud-claims-are-part-of-a-long-history-of-republican-voter-suppression-reporter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">alex h</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With one national poll after another showing President Donald Trump losing to former Vice President Joe Biden in November, the president and Attorney General William Barr continue to obsess over "voter fraud." They baselessly claim the crime is promoted by mail-in voting, despite its history as a reliable practice. Journalist Pema Levy pointed out that Barr's actions are part of a long a seedy history in an article published in Mother Jones this week, describing them as thinly veiled attempts at voter suppression.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"A pattern has emerged in recent years that's easy to spot," Levy explains. "Right before an election, Republican officials in battleground states announce voter fraud investigations. The goal is obvious: suppressing turnout. But what's new this year is that this underhanded tactic is being employed by the president and the Justice Department."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Levy cites Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp as an example of a Republican who has used bogus voter fraud claims to suppress turnout, recalling that only two days before the 2018 midterms, Kemp — who was Georgia's secretary of state before becoming governor — "came out with an explosive announcement: he was investigating the state Democratic Party for attempting to hack into the state's voter registration system."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"At the time, Kemp was both the state's top election official and the Republican nominee for governor in a dead-heat race against Democrat Stacey Abrams," Levy notes. "Kemp had a history of bogus voter fraud allegations against his political opponents, and many recognized the brazen tactic this time. Election law expert Rick Hasen called it 'perhaps the most outrageous example of election administration partisanship in the modern era' and 'banana republic stuff.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But in May 2020, Levy adds, Georgia's Republican attorney general "confirmed what was suspected all along: there was no evidence of any crime." Republicans, Levy stresses, "have a long history of making false allegations of voter fraud, only to see their accusations fall apart once scrutinized. But airing such charges right before an election threatens to destabilize and delegitimize it."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This year, according to Levy, one is seeing "an increase in fraud allegations from the Justice Department itself — and it appears to be part of Barr's ongoing effort to transform the (DOJ) into an arm of the Trump campaign, ready to engage in a longstanding GOP voter suppression tactic."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr, Levy warns, is showing that he is ready to "possibly aid the Trump campaign's legal efforts to get ballots tossed during the vote-counting process."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the U.S. Senate confirmed Barr as U.S. attorney general in 2019, Levy recalls, he was hailed as "by-the-book institutionalist" — only to show how much of a Trump loyalist he was when he "misrepresented" the findings of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation and "interfered" in the DOJ's investigation of long-time Trump ally Roger Stone. And during this year's presidential election, Levy predicts, Barr will to do whatever he can to help Trump win reelection.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Since Barr has torched his credibility," Levy writes, "any allegations of fraud emanating from the Justice Department in the coming weeks should be viewed skeptically. Barr is using an old playbook. You've been warned."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">jig up wht pwr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-supreme-court-is-finished-republicans-have-killed-it/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...They've turned the courts into a kennel for right-wing puppies, willing to sit there with floppy ears and their tongues out, panting and waiting to decide cases in favor of the billionaires who put them there. That's why there is a cottage industry of right-wing legal groups like Judicial Watch, Alliance Defending Freedom, Claremont Institute and the Center for Individual Rights, all of them funded by tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions in right-wing money. They make no bones about the fact that their job is to go out looking for plaintiffs to sue on behalf of big business and right-wing political interests to overturn laws they don't like. They have been behind the challenges to the Affordable Care Act and every anti-abortion lawsuit ever filed, not to mention suits against immigrant rights, civil rights, LGBT rights — you name it. And waiting in federal courthouses all over the country are Trump and Mitch McConnell's judicial poodles....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BO commented on in con call]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">lock her up, rule of law</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/its-not-just-a-chant-at-trumps-rallies-or-lame-wordplay-in-his-tweets-its-his-call-to-fascist-rule/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha hmmn, does djt hijack of law = evil perversion? also pseudo-populism by billionaire to line own pocket and corrupt cronies?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see roy cohn for full txt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/sadism-crime-and-a-love-of-lies-what-3500-lawsuits-reveal-about-trumps-true-nature/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sadism, crime and a love of lies: What 3,500 lawsuits reveal about Trump’s true nature</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by History News Network April 11, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American presidents before Donald Trump had some record of public achievement in politics, government or the military before they were elected. Donald Trump lacked any of those credentials, but brought his astounding history of involvement in thousands of lawsuits to the nation’s highest office. This trove of cases from more than 45 years reflects Trump’s contempt for ethical standards and for the US Constitution and the rule of law, the foundation of American democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a perennial litigant, Trump weaponized the law to devastate perceived enemies, to consolidate power, to frustrate opposing parties, as former federal prosecutor and acclaimed author James D. Zirin illuminates in his compelling and disturbing history of Trump’s use and abuse of the law, Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits (All Points Books)....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see roy cohn for full txt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/sadism-crime-and-a-love-of-lies-what-3500-lawsuits-reveal-about-trumps-true-nature/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sadism, crime and a love of lies: What 3,500 lawsuits reveal about Trump’s true nature</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by History News Network April 11, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American presidents before Donald Trump had some record of public achievement in politics, government or the military before they were elected. Donald Trump lacked any of those credentials, but brought his astounding history of involvement in thousands of lawsuits to the nation’s highest office. This trove of cases from more than 45 years reflects Trump’s contempt for ethical standards and for the US Constitution and the rule of law, the foundation of American democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a perennial litigant, Trump weaponized the law to devastate perceived enemies, to consolidate power, to frustrate opposing parties, as former federal prosecutor and acclaimed author James D. Zirin illuminates in his compelling and disturbing history of Trump’s use and abuse of the law, Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits (All Points Books)....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James D. Zirin: He has continued and I think he will continue. And I think the rule of law has been seriously undermined.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our democracy has been seriously compromised because the framers of the Constitution never thought the system would work this way. Republican senators deserve part of the blame because of their need to retain power or whatever, they did not respect the oath they took to be fair and impartial judges of the facts and the law, but instead voted along party lines to acquit him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robin Lindley: Trump said sometime in the 90s, as you note in your book, that “I love to have enemies.” I think most of us wouldn’t feel that way and it seems pathological to me. What did you think when you found that quote from him?&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James D. Zirin: Most politicians are controversial and have political enemies. I think Trump relishes that perhaps more than others and he loves to attack them personally. We know Biden is “Sleepy Joe” and Elizabeth Warren is “Pocahontas” and Bernie Sanders is “Crazy Bernie.” He has nicknames for everyone and he revels in trashing them rather than addressing the merits of anything they propose.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robin Lindley: The mentality of an eight-year-old bully, it seems. You write that Trump’s experience in lawsuits reflects “his inmost ulterior motivation.” This comes out in your responses, but could you sum up your sense of his character, motivation, and morality based on your extensive research?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James D. Zirin: His virulent combination of anti-science, anti-law, ignorance, irrational conspiracy theorizing, instability, narcissism and vindictiveness has led us to national catastrophe. If he is re-elected, I fear for the republic and the American people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robin Lindley: As you demonstrate, Trump is an anomaly in terms of the adversarial system. Do you have anything to add on his abuse of legal process?&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James D. Zirin: Look, the adversary system is the crown jewel of our legal system. We got it from the British. The idea is that you had lawyers on both sides who were partisan, who were like the Knights Templar who rode into battle on behalf of somebody or other in the Middle Ages. That has been the best way of getting at the truth. In contrast, in civil law countries like France or Germany, the judge conducts the inquiry. The judge might ask questions of the lawyers, but the lawyers don’t develop the evidence on both sides.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But adversary doesn’t mean enemy. What Trump has demonstrated is that we have a great legal system and we all have the benefit of it. But there are also limitations for the law and those limitations can be exploited by someone determined to beat the system, and that’s what Trump has done.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robin Lindley. Thank you, Mr. Zirin and congratulations on your groundbreaking and compelling book on the life of Donald Trump through the perspective of his thousands of lawsuits. It’s been an honor to talk with you.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was originally published at History News Network</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dn 220 also XR win?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/2/headlines/climate_activists_win_landmark_victory_in_oregon_after_presenting_necessity_defense</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In&nbsp; a victory for climate activists, a Portland, Oregon, jury refused to convict five Extinction Rebellion members for blocking railroad tracks used to transport oil by Zenith Energy Corporation and other oil companies. The activists were acquitted after presenting a necessity defense. Valve turner Ken Ward — one of the “Zenith 5” — said of the landmark victory, “When citizens are told the truth about the climate crisis — which is the first of Extinction Rebellion’s demands — they take appropriate and responsible action, as our jury did, and we thank them.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other environmental activism news, police arrested members of Extinction Rebellion NYC as they blocked construction of a National Grid fracked gas pipeline in Brooklyn.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TOPICS:Climate CrisisProtestsNatural Gas & Oil Drilling</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">YIKES MODERATION BUFFER ERODING IN REAL TIME?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-and-mcconnell-just-took-over-the-nations-most-liberal-court-report/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx omfg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and McConnell just took over the nation’s most liberal court: report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story December 22, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lost in all of the attention being paid to the impeachment of Donald Trump has been the packing the courts with conservative justices by the president with the full support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Worst of all, reports Politico, the Republican majority has taken over the traditionally liberal 9th Circuit, long a bastion of fending off conservative initiatives</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report states, “The Senate confirmation of Lawrence VanDyke and Patrick Bumatay to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this month brought to nine the number of appointments President Donald Trump has made to the 29-member bench that serves as the last stop for nearly all legal complaints lodged in nine Western states.Democratic-appointed judges now hold a three-seat majority, compared with 11 at the start of Trump’s presidency.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the transition to a conservative majority court could have devastating consequences for liberal initiatives — including health care reform.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The 9th Circuit is a very important circuit, and the presence of more conservative judges puts in peril all of American health care reform,” the state attorney general explained.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If the trend continues, it represents a major shift in the liberal wing of the judiciary, meaning lawsuits for progressive causes won’t find a friendly ear as easily as they have. The circuit has been the go-to venue for activist state attorneys eager to freeze Trump policies on health care, immigration and other social issues. It ruled against Trump’s weakening of Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, as well as multiple versions of his travel ban,” Politico reports before adding, “Trump has called the 9th Circuit ‘a complete and total disaster’ and a ‘big thorn in our side,’ and some congressional Republicans still threaten to break up its jurisdiction. But its changing ideological makeup could wind up giving states like California less legal elbow room to challenge Trump policies and go their own way in areas like reproductive rights and LGBTQ issues.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report also notes, “The 9th Circuit isn’t the only court whose makeup has changed through Trump’s conservative nominees and McConnell’s singular focus on confirming judges. The 1st Circuit in Boston and 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia now have Republican-appointed majorities. But the 9th has outside importance as the biggest circuit in the country and a jurisdiction with more than 60 million people.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can read more here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/republicans-dont-even-pretend-to-care-about-laws-now-what-they-unleash-after-impeachment-will-be-really-ugly/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">authoritarians have to undermine ct rule of law:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/environmental-activists-have-higher-death-rates-than-some-soldiers/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Claudelice Silva dos Santos was shocked but not surprised when her brother and his wife were murdered. For years José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva had been on the receiving end of death threats and attacks for their work combatting illegal logging and deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest, where they lived. “We knew that there was a high risk that it could happen,” Santos says. “But we always believed that it never would happen, that the resistance, the visibility of our fight—all the things we did to prevent the killing—would work out.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Santos’s relatives were among more than 1,500 people across 50 countries to be murdered in retaliation for protecting land, water, forests and other natural resources between 2002 and 2017. The annual death toll doubled over that 15-year period, and the killings tended to take place in countries with high levels of corruption and weak rule of law, according to study findings published Monday in Nature Sustainability. As the authors report, in that period, murders of environmental defenders outweighed the combined deaths of soldiers from the U.K. and Australia deployed to overseas war zones.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“These cases include everything from award-winning people who were successful in garnering international support to others who were very much operating at the local level,” says Mary Menton, a research fellow in environmental justice at the University of Sussex in England and a co-author of the new study. “Oftentimes it’s individuals killed, but there have also been cases of massacres.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">YIKES TOTAL RW TAKEOVER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/fundamentalism-and-authoritarianism-how-the-party-of-law-and-order-become-the-party-of-crooks-and-crime</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fundamentalism and authoritarianism: How the party of ‘law and order’ became the party of crooks and crime</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Paul Rosenberg / Salon November 24, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whatever happened to the Republicans as the “party of law and order”? True, Richard Nixon, who first branded the party that way, was lying when he famously said, “I am not a crook.” Both Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal rank among the most notorious examples of executive branch lawlessness in our nation’s history. But through it all, the narrative commitment to the brand never wavered. It was a source of moral and political strength, always to be contrasted with “soft on crime” Democrats, however contrary the front-page facts might be.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But not anymore. As noted here by Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of rhetoric whose book, “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump” (table of contents here), will be published next year, it’s the Democrats who are the party of law and order in the impeachment drama, while the GOP is the party of conspiracy:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are betting that public opinion will move toward impeachment and removal once more information is made public. To try to shape public opinion they are relying on a law-and-order frame that tells Americans that the impeachment inquiry is legitimate and legally justified.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats are positioning themselves as the only ones willing to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans, led by President Trump, are counting on their power to frame reality to prevent the public from moving toward impeachment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GOP is relying on a conspiracy frame that tells Americans that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate and part of a plot to destroy America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course the rhetoric of conspiracy isn’t entirely synonymous with that of crooks and criminals — but when you start to insist that career law-enforcement officials are all in on it, and you’ve abandoned the “law and order” frame to the Democrats, the crooks and criminals stench is difficult to dispel. And it’s not happening in isolation, either — above and beyond the plethora of scandals Trump generates, and the lockstep support Republicans are giving him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That lockstep support is perhaps the most striking difference between now and Watergate-a difference most readily understood via the role of asymmetric polarization and negative partisanship, which cautions us not to expect the kind of gradual but inexorable opinion shift seen 45 years ago in response to the buildup of evidence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In turn, dramatically increased polarization is a predicted result of historical trends described by structural demographic theory (SDT), which I wrote about previously in October 2016, reviewing “Ages of Discord,” an analysis of American history by evolutionary anthropologist Peter Turchin. SDT identifies three underlying factors contributing to increased levels of political instability: mass immiseration (stagnant or falling wages, worsening health, declining well-being), elite overproduction (increased competition for wealth and power), and fiscal distress (a product of both public debt and trust in public institutions). Mass immiseration helps fuel elite overproduction, since stagnant or falling wages leaves more money for elites, and the increased competition that results reduces broad cooperation and intensifies elite fragmentation (which also contributes to fiscal distress). In America, political polarization is a prime indicator of that fragmentation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fact that polarization has been asymmetric deserves special attention, as it’s not yet implicated in SDT. But it can be credibly explained. In “The AuthoritarianDynamic,” Karen Stenner presented compelling evidence that expressed intolerance resulted primarily from two factors: an innate predisposition to intolerance, demanding obedience and conformity, (“authoritarianism”) interacting with increased societal threat, particularly dissension in public opinion and loss of confidence in political leaders. Thus, there is both a logical reason for the expression of authoritarianism to increase as political instability rises, and motivation for either authoritarian or opportunistic elites to strategically manipulate conditions to intensify this process.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One can read “The Long Southern Strategy” (Salon interview with co-author Angie Maxwell here) as a coherent history of how GOP-affiliated elites have pursued just such a strategy over the past 50-plus years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Authoritarian attitudes peak not only when social conditions change, but also if folks are made to feel like social conditions are changing (even if they aren’t),” Maxwell said. “The threats are recycled, renewed with a sense of urgency, stoking a fire that is always smoldering. It isn’t a natural rise in authoritarian attitudes, it is an orchestrated rise in authoritarian attitudes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SDT suggests that it may be both, but without the orchestration it would be much more manageable, and much less prone to produce lawless behavior.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One can also view conservative legal activism as a key component in that process, as well as a profound influence on elite politics as a whole. At the time of Watergate, authoritarians were more evenly divided between the parties, but they’ve become much more concentrated in the GOP since then. As their experience of threat has risen, they’ve become more inclined to lawlessness — although it’s not tolerated on the part of others, of course!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In short, the lawlessness at the top of the GOP isn’t new — just vastly more blatant than it was during Watergate.&nbsp; But the infrastructure supporting, defending and excusing it is dramatically more powerful and robust, and the authoritarian mass base is much more consolidated within their voter base.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aside from impeachment itself, three other developments this month underscores the GOP’s broader embrace of lawlessness, in contrast to its decades-long self-branding. First, there is Trump’s pardoning of three war criminals, burnishing his brand of support for official lawlessness and thuggish brutality. He may mistakenly believe this endears him to&nbsp; the military — which wants nothing to do with them — but it’s also meant to hype authoritarian support among his most rabid supporters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Second, his Roy Cohn-style attorney general, William Barr, delivered a widely criticized authoritarian screed to the Federalist Society, portraying the impeachment inquiry as dangerous to the rule of law, rather than warranted by Trump’s self-professed crimes. Third, legal scholar Steven Calabresi, chair of the Federalist Society’sboard of directors, wrote a pair of opinion articles accusing Democrats of violating Trump’s rights, one of which, according to Steven Mazie, the Economist’s Supreme Court correspondent, “reads like the first draft of an op-ed by a MAGA middle-schooler who was inspired by Jacob Wohl’s erstwhile Twitter account.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The combination of Trump’s blatant endorsement of lawlessness and the double-whammy high-profile embarrassments of Calabresi and Barr reflects something much broader and profoundly troubling. The latter two offer striking indicators of just how seriously this is impacting establishment conservatism, in a way that can’t be fobbed off on Trump alone, while Trump’s pardons of war criminals — following earlier pardons, including that of ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio — not only enable brute lawlessness in uniform, but points towards outright valorization in the future, especially if performed in direct support of Trump himself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To better understand the role of the conservative legal movement, I turned to two law professors I’ve interviewed before: Eric J. Segall, author of “Originalism as Faith,” to help illuminate the role that faith has played in this process, and David Pozen, co-author (with Joseph Fishkin) of the paper, “Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball,” which starts making sense of how the political asymmetry discussed above impacts norm-violating practices, with profound systemic results. In that paper, Fishkin and Pozen write:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “restorationist” constitutional narratives and interpretive theories promoted by Republican politicians and lawyers, [this] Essay suggests, serve to legitimate the party’s use of constitutional hardball.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While this has surely been the elite focus of the actors involved, movement conservatives have also made remaking the Supreme Court and the entire judicial branch central to their politics in ways progressives have not, and this means engaging in authoritarian mobilization via threat manipulation, as described in “The Long Southern Strategy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Originalism plays a key role in this, but the meaning of that term shifted sharply in the process. At first, Segall told me, the originalist position argued that judges shouldn’t be engaged in moral reasoning:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not for judges to select the best moral position for a country, it’s for people who are elected to do it. Unless judges can point to something in the text of the Constitution or something clear in the history, then judges should say look, the Constitution doesn’t speak to this, vote on it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Originalism, at first, “was inextricably tied to deference. That’s the only way that works.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that all changed when conservatives gained control of the court in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Segall says: “After 12 years of Reagan-Bush judges, the people who embraced originalism dropped the deference part.” That meant a return of moral reasoning, “because history cannot answer modern problems,” and while conservatives won’t admit that, “it’s true and they act that way.” The Constitution is silent about the rights of transgender people or the definition of marriage, to cite obvious examples....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">quite long]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;McConnell is trampling the rules of the Senate to keep Trumpism alive — no matter what voters say in 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tom Boggioni / Raw StoryMay 20, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Political insiders claim that Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is trampling all the rules of the Senate to get as many of Donald Trump’s court nominees approved as quickly as he can.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">note that authoritarian/fascism req take out legal system</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">c de v</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump is not an ideologue or a person who possesses a coherent or sophisticated understanding of political theory, history or philosophy. He is all impulse and id, a man gifted in manipulating the fears of ignorant and insecure white people in the service of expanding his power and his fortune. Trump’s enforcers, including Attorney General William Barr, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and the right-wing media machine, are then tasked with transforming the president’s most base impulses into public policy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we have seen throughout Trump’s presidency — and as we see now in Robert Mueller’s report, with its extensive litany of borderline corruption and its numerous instances of blatant obstruction of justice — the president and his allies disregard the law whenever it is inconvenient, and enforce it with callous cruelty when it serves their goals. This strategic arbitrariness weakens and delegitimizes the rule of law until, at some point, it can be totally rejected and dispensed with. The Trump administration’s ultimate goal is a “permanent state of exception” in the service of racial authoritarianismThis administration’s collective assault on nonwhites — in particular refugees, migrants and immigrants from Latin America — as well as Muslims and other groups deemed to be “un-American” is one of the principal areas where its contempt for the law and democracy is most apparent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last week Trump fired Kirstjen Nielsen from her position as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security because she was not cruel enough to immigrants, refugees and migrants — apparently breaking up families and putting people in concentration camps was insufficient for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. Even more troubling, Trump fired Nielsen because she was not willing to violate the law at his command.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump also reportedly told Kevin McAleenan, who was then head of the Border Patrol and is now acting DHS secretary, to break the law by denying asylum seekers entry to the United States. It has also been reported that Trump promised McAleenan a pardon if he find himself in legal trouble for following Trump’s orders.Trump also told U.S. soldiers at the Mexican border that they should brutalize immigrants, refugees, and migrants. This too is a violation of civilian law, international law, as well as the U.S. Code of Military Justice. >Donald Trump’s handpicked attorney general, William Barr, has decided that refugees can be held in detention indefinitely. This appears to be a violation of federal law and constitutionally protected rights to due process.Trump has also suggested using human beings as political weapons by transporting migrants, refugees and immigrants from Latin America — a group of people Trump has slurred as a “race” of rapists and murderers and a human infestation — to “sanctuary cities” as a way (as he sees it) to punish Democrats Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor at New York University and an expert on fascism, authoritarianism and propaganda, explained the danger of Trump’s recent actions to me in a recent email:...This latest threat, and asking officials not to obey the law, and assuring them of a pardon, is just a new threshold of the contempt for law and democratic norms Trump has always shown, and an escalation of his white nationalist ideology and governing-by-vendetta leadership style. He wants to put mayors on the defensive, and create “crises” about immigration on city peripheries — migrants will pay the price....istorian Richard Frankel, an expert on modern Germany and the rise of the Nazis, provided additional context for Trump’s new initiative, also by email:...When Trump thinks of migrants he thinks of criminals, rapists, drug dealers, thugs, carriers of disease, people so fundamentally alien that they could never assimilate into American society and, in fact, threaten to destroy the country. And when you add his anti-Semitism to the mix, then the problem is not just that they’re coming to destroy America, but that they’re actually being sent by Soros, the “International Jew,” to destroy it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the history of Trump’s presidency is chronicled by some future scholar, these events over the last few weeks — including Barr’s partisan whitewashing of the Mueller report — will likely be described as some of the most ominous and important in America’s surrender to authoritarianism and fascism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unfortunately, said events have already been thrown down the memory hole, both by the public and the corporate media, who have been trained and conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs by the orchestrated chaos and confusion of Trump’s regime. As historian Gore Vidal observed back in 2004 about the George W. Bush presidency, “the ‘United States of Amnesia’ will be worse than an amnesiac; it will be — have suffered a lobotomy. There will be no functioning historical memory of our history.” What has transpired under Donald Trump is far worse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This behavior feels new to most Americans. But in reality, such an assault on the rule of law, and the elevation of a man and a movement above the normal political process, are common around the world in failing democracies. Moreover, Trump’s regime is echoing one of the most grotesque examples of a failed democracy in modern history: the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Third Reich and the Nazis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is overwhelming evidence to support such a claim.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to the examples of lawlessness and cruelty detailed above, the Trump administration has conducted a campaign of “soft” ethnic cleansing against nonwhite immigrants, refugees and migrants. In a ruling last Friday, a federal judge in New York described the administration’s efforts to deport Haitian refugees as evidencing “a discriminatory purpose of removing non-white immigrants to the country.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s regime has threatened to remove judges who will not follow his orders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has not appointed permanent replacements for key cabinet positions in order to subvert the congressional approval process. This allows Trump to undermine checks and balances on his power by putting his hand-picked minions in control of federal departments and agencies on a temporary, rotating basis. Trump has also chosen to leave senior positions unstaffed as a way of extending his ability to rule by fiat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his supporters in the news media routinely use eliminationist and genocidal language to describe nonwhites and others whom they view as a type of enemy Other in America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much of Trump and his allies’ rhetoric directly channels that of the Nazis and the Third Reich, used to described Jewish people and others who would be annihilated during the Holocaust.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump administration is ordering the United States military to build more concentration camps for nonwhite immigrants, migrants, and refugees.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In their fundraising emails and other materials, Trump describes his supporters as constituting a “movement” that will somehow “restore” and “protect” America against liberals, progressives, Democrats, nonwhite people, and others who are a threat to his American Apartheid “renewal” project. Absolute devotion and loyalty to Donald Trump is required for this plan to be successful. Trump is now offering membership cards to his supporters to cement their cult-like devotion to him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because they see it as their natural home, neo-Nazis and members of other right-wing hate organizations are running for public office as Republicans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There has been a documented increase in right-wing political violence–some of it lethal –both during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and now through to his third year in office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigative journalist Andrea Pitzer, who is the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, told me via email how the Trump administration’s new plans to abuse nonwhite immigrants, migrants, and refugees are a violation of international law that will likely end in violence and death.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She explained how, “This idea that there have been discussions of setting up dedicated trains for migrants whose humanity the government disputes and shipping them to designated cities they’re not allowed to leave–especially as some kind of political stunt–is beyond disturbing. And talk of the military running detention camps for migrants on American soil is also horrific. Even the shameful detention program for Japanese Americans during WWII was run by a civilian agency.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pitzer warns that:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The current administration seems bent on finding a way to use old and discredited forms of civilian detention against vulnerable groups–the kind of detention we’ve seen degenerate into atrocities again and again worldwide. The schemes emerging from the White House are a threat to our democracy as a whole and can’t be squared with either the Constitution or our obligations under international law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As new public opinion research by PRRI and Pew shows, the American people are extremely divided between those who understand the value of a more cosmopolitan, forward-thinking, “racially” diverse, and inclusive society and those others (mostly white Republicans and other Trump supporters) who want America to be a white conservative Christian country where other people are subordinated to second-class citizenship, and thus considered peripheral to and therefore outside of the national community.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump and his allies are warping and breaking the law to advance this grotesque vision of the American democratic project by mining white rage and white backlash identity politics for personal financial and political gain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that same email conversation, professor Frankel describes what Trump’s version of America, when fully realized, will look like:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump clearly sees the law as an impediment to achieving his goals. He believes he knows what’s best for the country (at least for those people he considers to be members of the real national community) and so anything he does in the service of the nation is (or should be), by definition, legal. The promise of pardons for those who work toward his goal indicates the extent to which he’d go to undermine the current legal system in favor of one that is in tune with his will. As Goering put it, “The law and the will of the Fuehrer are one.” Trump’s vision of America is a white Christian male-dominated Herrenvolk democracy. How to make that vision real is up to those below him, and no law should stand in the way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once the law is transformed into the expression of the leader’s will, there’s not much we can do to stop him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The myth of American Exceptionalism will not save American democracy or its citizens from Trump’s machinations and the global dystopia his agents are so feverishly working to create. In 1935, Sinclair wrote his famous novel “It Can’t Happen Here” about the rise of authoritarianism and fascism in the United States. His warning was eight decades prescient about the Age of Trump. But unfortunately Sinclair’s question is being asked too late, the tragedy is already unfolding and the answer is a plain and clear “yes”. William Barr’s distorted version of the Mueller Report is all just scribbling on the epithet of America’s democracy and empire. The American people decided to be bystanders to their own history and destiny. This is very pathetic. It is also the truth and a tragedy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://documentedinvestigations.org/2018/07/12/janus-decision-rooted-koch-wishlist/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With last month’s monumental Janus decision by the Supreme Court, the Koch family won a major victory in their multi-generational attack on unions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ruling spreads to the entire public sector one of the laws the Koch fortune first helped push through in Kansas 60 years ago: “right-to-work.” And in doing so it enshrines the union-busting agenda their fossil fuel money has helped advance for decades.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(This story was first published by In These Times.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Through a single vote, the Court’s 5-4 Janus decision reverses decades of legal precedent that had obstructed part of the Koch’s pro-corporate agenda. That vote was secured with the Kochs’ help in bankrolling efforts that include: helping to maintain a GOP Senate majority; helping the Senate block President Obama from filling the February 2016 Supreme Court vacancy; and helping to win the confirmation of right-wing corporate activist Neil Gorsuch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Janus helps cement the nation’s highest court as the Koch Court, and Charles Koch wants to keep it that way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Documented first detailed in partnership with the Intercept, for months the Kochs had been investing heavily in anticipation of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the Court, which was announced on June 27, the same day as Janus. Earlier this year, the Koch group “Americans for Prosperity” (AFP) hired Sarah Field from the Koch-funded Federalist Society to spearhead its campaign to extend the Koch hold on the Court for perhaps a generation or more.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite claims by AFP that helping to seat Gorsuch was their “first” foray into Supreme Court nominations, the Koch effort to influence who becomes a judge and how they interpret the law goes back much further.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, the Kochs have been investing in reshaping the law to suit their personal agenda for decades. For example, the Koch group Citizens for a Sound Economy, AFP’s predecessor, backed Clarence Thomas’ controversial confirmation to the Court more than 25 years ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Kochs’ long-term agenda to remake the United States in their image is a multi-pronged effort that includes changing both the law and who makes or interprets the laws, including the anti-union Janus decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE SEEDS OF JANUS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The effort to roll back union rights actually began almost a century ago, as wealthy industrialists objected to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, known as the Wagner Act, which enshrined the right to collective bargaining in the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many tycoons of the time, like Alfred Sloan, head of General Motors, opposed those rights along with other business reforms of FDR’s New Deal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fred Koch, co-founder of the corporation that later became Koch Industries, harshly criticized American workers under New Deal policies in 1938. He extolled the economic policies of Emperor Hirohito and fascists Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although nobody agrees with me, I am of the opinion that the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan, simply because they are all working and working hard… The laboring people in those countries are proportionately much better off than they are any place else in the world. When you contrast the state of mind of Germany today with what it was in 1925 you begin to think that perhaps this course of idleness, feeding at the public trough, dependence on government, etc., with which we are afflicted is not permanent and can be overcome.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Only recently, through the investigative work of Jane Mayer, has the public learned that the Koch fortune was actually built in part on directly aiding Hitler by building the oil-cracking factory that became “a key component in the Nazi war machine.” As Mayer noted in her 2016 book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, that factory refined high-octane fuel needed for the Luftwaffe, which targeted, terrorized, and killed many thousands of innocent civilians. Fred Koch’s praise of Germany came after Hitler’s air bombers helped murder 136 men, women, and children in Guernica in the Basque region, a tragedy made famous by the mural painted by Pablo Picasso.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, industrialists like Sloan pursued efforts to undo New Deal reforms. In 1947, Congress amended the Wagner Act with the Taft-Hartley Act. It gave states the power to pass “right-to-work” laws that undermined collective bargaining by not requiring workers who benefit from bargained rights to pay dues to the unions that secured and enforced them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HOW THE KOCHS FERTILIZED “RIGHT-TO-WORK”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Mayer noted:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Fred Koch] was an early and active member of the Wichita-based DeMille Foundation for Political Freedom, an anti-labor group [founded in 1945] that was a forerunner of the National Right to Work Defense Foundation. In a revealing private letter, one of its staff members explained the group’s ‘Astroturf’ strategy. In reality, he said, big-business industrialists would run the group, serving as its ‘anonymous quarterbacks,’ and ‘call the turns.’ But he said they needed to sell the ‘yarn’ that the group was ‘composed of housewives, farmers, small businessmen, professional people, wage earners-not big business industrialists.’ Otherwise, he admitted, the movement was ‘almost certainly doomed to failure.’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By 1954, an engineer from Wichita, Kan., Reed Larson, took a leave from his job at the Coleman Company, to launch Kansans-for-the-Right-to-Work. The following year, former Rep. Fred Hartley, Jr., (R-N.J.) co-founded the National Right to Work Committee (NRTWC). By 1958, the NRTWC was targeting six states to adopt right-to-work laws but it failed in every place, except Kansas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Fred [Koch] co-led a referendum drive to alter the state constitution in order to make it harder for unions to take root in Kansas,” Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean noted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Nov. 9, 1958, the New York Times reported that right-to-work won in Kansas because anti-union views had taken hold, noting:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More campaign efforts and more money were expended on the emotion-provoking issue than on the campaigns of all Republican and Democratic state and Congressional candidates combined. … For the last 10 days or so before Election Day an organization called Kansans-for-the-Right-to-Work flooded newspapers, television channels and other advertising media with appeals to ‘vote yes.’ These by far outnumbered the ‘vote no’ advertisements of unions opposing the amending.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A month later, Fred Koch joined Robert Welch and ten other men in Indianapolis to found the extreme rightwing group dubbed the “John Birch Society” (JBS).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Washington Post noted in its 1961 profile of JBS:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the top of the Society’s structure in Wichita are several very wealthy industrialists. Oil engineer Fred Koch is president of the Rock Island Oil and Refining Co. A millionaire several times over, he is on the Society’s national council. … Wichita is the John Birch Society’s center of strength in Kansas, and one of its greatest in the country. … The leadership of the Birch Society overlaps heavily with the leadership of the organizations that successfully campaigned in 1958 for a right to work amendment to the State’s Constitution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As detailed by Group Research Inc. in its 1962 history of JBS, Koch worked with both NRTWC and the Christian Crusade in arguing against union dues like those at issue in the Janus case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A History of Hostility</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1959, Fred Koch joined the Executive Committee to plan the JBS strategy to push back against what it viewed as communism in nearly every American institution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1960, Koch published his polemic “A Business Man Looks at Communism” and distributed it to JBS chapters across the country. That pamphlet makes a variety of hysterical claims against unions, including:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Labor Unions have long been a Communist goal. How far they have been penetrated by Communists I have no idea, but it must be very far indeed, judging the hatred andvenom poured out in some labor papers….</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Koch also accused the U.S. Supreme Court under former Gov. Earl Warren (R-CA) of issuing pro-Communist decisions, the universities of having thousands of Communist professors, the United Nations of being subversive, and former GOP President Dwight Eisenhower of being soft on Communism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similar sentiments were expressed in numerous other publications the JBS also pushed. The organization pitched a screed against the union workers who organized against Kohler fixtures in Wisconsin. It pushed attacks on the UAW’s Walter Reuther, who was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It published and peddled right-wing writer Rosalie Gordon’s attack on the U.S. Supreme Court for decisions enforcing collective bargaining rights as protecting the “labor-union monopoly,” along with what she called the “plague” of desegregation caused by Brown v. Board of Education.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The JBS also pushed reprints of tomes by Ludwig von Mises attacking unions as illegitimate intervenors in the “free market,” artificial inflators of wages for workers, and thieves of the profits of tycoons. It promoted F.A. Hayek’s vilification of government regulation of corporations as leading to fascism and Hilaire du Berrier’s conspiracy theories that American labor unions were supposedly using union dues to finance communist terrorist violence abroad.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fred Koch’s son Charles urged visitors to the John Birch Society bookstore in Wichita to read copies of JBS pamphlets, including those by anti-labor writers from the Austrian School of Economics, like Mises.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, as the present author first documented for the Center for Media and Democracy, Charles Koch became active in JBS after returning home to Wichita to help with the family business. Charles was a leader and fundraiser for JBS, including underwriting its publications and national radio network, while it attacked collective bargaining and leaders of the civil rights movement such as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CHARLES KOCH IN ACTION</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though he left JBS in 1968, Charles Koch never abandoned its core anti-union agenda and the lessons of his father’s commitment to right-to-work. He did try to shed some of the rhetoric around communist conspiracies, though of late he was painted by Koch political strategist Richard Fink as a martyr against “collectivism,” in audio obtained by the Undercurrent, which also included outlandish claims linking fascism and the minimum wage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was Charles Koch’s investment in lifting up the work of Mises and Hayek, who made similar claims, that helped preserve and extend their legacy. As Stephen Moore noted in a 2006 profile on Charles for the Wall Street Journal:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The authors who have had the most profound influence on his own political philosophy include F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Simon, Paul Johnson and Charles Murray. Mr. Koch says that he experienced an intellectual epiphany in the early 1960s, when he attended a conference on free-market capitalism hosted by the late, great Leonard Reed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charles brought Mises to Wichita to speak and deployed F.A. “Baldy” Harper’s Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) to promote Mises and his protégé Hayek. As lauded by Reed’s Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), Hayek argued that unions violated the very idea of the “rule of law” and that the Wagner Act was central to that violation, a sentiment he promoted in numerous writings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charles Koch is deeply devoted to an alternative universe in which collective bargaining undermines the rule of law and is not a major cause of increased wages.Moore noted in his interview:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As we continue, Mr. Koch becomes increasingly animated. He discusses another seminal work in his collection, F.A. Harper’s 1957 Why Wages Rise. The book demonstrates ‘that wages rise not because of unions or government action, but because of marginal productivity gains — people get more money when they produce more value for other people.’ Then he confides, “I was so thrilled by this revelation that I had what Maslow called a ‘peak experience.’'”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Koch has also supported the NRTWC, which “sought to put a new face on the anti-union campaign by building its rhetoric on the arguments of Hayek, Mises, and others with a ‘respectable’ pedigree.” The NRTWC argues that:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Compulsory unionism itself violates the dignity of the individual worker, regardless of how the forced union tribute is spent. As the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich A. von Hayek wrote: “[T]he coercion which unions have been permitted to exercise … is primarily the coercion of fellow workers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deep Devotion and Investment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hayek and Mises are not the only two virulently anti-union economists Charles Koch backed. As Nancy MacLean documented in Democracy in Chains, one of the key architects of the Koch agenda domestically and internationally, James Buchanan, also railed against the so-called “union monopolies” for distorting “free market” wages.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, as UnKoch My Campus has detailed, Koch money has funded scores of academics to push their agenda at universities, buying control over content and personnel with restrictive dictates attached to their donations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many of the rightwing groups Charles Koch is known to have made a major investment in since the 1970s have pushed right-to-work or attacked collective bargaining rights. These include Reason magazine, the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network and many more.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During David Koch’s 1980 bid to become vice president, running on the ticket of Libertarian Ed Clark—which was pushed by Charles and fueled with Koch cash—the campaign platform included making right-to-work the law of the land:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[W]e urge repeal of the National Labor Relations Act, and all state Right to Work Laws, which prohibit employers from making voluntary contracts with unions. We oppose all government back-to-work orders as imposing a form of forced labor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That is, there would be no need for state right-to-work laws if there were no NLRA that protects collective bargaining rights. As a result, right-to-work would be effectively nationalized at the determination of the employer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After badly losing that election, the Kochs have invested heavily in changing the culture—and courts of America—to make their anti-union vision a reality.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right-to-work is part of that vision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MILLIONS SPENT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A leak of the Kochs’ summer retreat in 2010 revealed that they featured NRTWC leaders at their gathering of billionaires to plot plans for that year’s midterm elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2012, before most of America even knew that the Kochs had branded their billionaire conclave as “Freedom Partners,” that group injected $1 million directly into the NRTWC among the more than $200 million of its known spending that cycle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2016, they focused much of their known political spending on keeping a GOP majority in the Senate, and they influenced the make-up of the U.S. Supreme Court by helping to block Judge Merrick Garland’s confirmation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For the 2018 election, they’ve pledged to spend more than $400 million through the Seminar Network, the latest rebranding of their network of tycoons.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To be clear, the Koch family fortune is not the only one that has been expended pushing right-to-work laws to try to weaken the power of ordinary people to negotiate through unions. A major funder of right-to-work effort has been the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, along with Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, which Mother Jones has dubbed “the ATM” of the right wing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Collective bargaining has provided women with greater economic opportunities and job security. Right-to-work laws also have a disproportionate impact on people of color, who are union members at a higher rate than whites. Black women will likely be the group most adversely affected by the Janus case. Notably, workers in right-to-work states also have lower wages than in states that have rejected this agenda.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">UNDERMINING PROGRESSIVES TOO</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The spread of right to work through Janus also will affect our elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As In These Times has documented with the Center for Media and Democracy, the national push for right-to-work is designed to undermine the power of unions and to “defang and defund” them as a way to weaken the chances for progressives to win in politics and policy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Koch investment in making right-to-work a national reality represents one of the longest and deepest commitments to this agenda, aside from NRTWC itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And this year marks the 60th anniversary of Fred Koch’s victory of making right-to-work legally binding in Kansas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, six decades later, Charles Koch has helped make his father’s wish binding on the rest of America through helping to make the Janus ruling a reality.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lisa Graves</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN 918</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...Hill wrote as if it were possible for Republicans to act in good faith, when we know for a fact they cannot — a point driven home by Paul Krugman, in a recent column entitled “Kavanaugh and the Politics of Bad Faith.” Sherman gives good advice for how Democrats should fight this battle, but does not say enough about the war. It’s a war we have to fight and win, in order for Hill’s lessons to be learned.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Krugman’s discussion of bad faith is a helpful starting place. Bad faith is more than just hypocrisy, he notes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Bad faith” is, by the way, a legal term, referring to “entering into an agreement without the intention or means to fulfill it, or violating basic standards of honesty.” In politics, it usually means pretending to be committed to principles you abandon the moment they become inconvenient. And bad faith in this sense pervades almost everything the modern G.O.P. says and does.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kavanaugh is a poster boy for GOP bad faith, but bad faith is just one part of the picture. Krugman clicks through several examples (Paul Ryan’s claims to fiscal responsibility vs. his deficit-exploding tax cut, attacks on Obama’s patriotism vs. quiescence about Trump) before summing up:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, what’s really hard is to come up with significant areas of politics or policy where Republicans are acting in good faith. ... Mainly, I suspect, because its core policy agenda of cutting taxes on the rich while slashing social programs is deeply unpopular. So to win elections it must obscure its true policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There’s nothing new in this. More than 50 years ago Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril wrote a landmark book, “The Political Beliefs of Americans: A Study of Public Opinion.” One of the book’s key findings was that almost two-thirds of the American people were “operational liberals,” in the sense that they supported more social spending for a list of specific needs, while almost half were “ideological conservatives,” in the sense that they supported "limited government" and "the free market." This disconnect represented a significant problem which the authors addressed by arguing that “the time has come for a restatement of American ideology to bring it in line with what the great majority of people want and approve.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This restatement never occurred, obviously. Instead, we got the opposite: an increasingly powerful, rigid and extreme conservative movement, which paid less and less attention to facts over time as reality stubbornly refused to conform to its beliefs. The ideological/operational divide they described can also be characterized as a mythos/logos divide (see Karen Armstrong’s introduction to "The Battle For God," for example.) Logos deals with practical matters, while mythos is concerned with meaning.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the judicial realm the conservative mythos is easily expressed: timeless justice, unswayed by the mood of the moment — or even the age. This is what Antonin Scalia’s supposed “originalism” offers, for example, even though it falls to pieces on close inspection. And that’s also what defines the essential liberal/conservative divide: Whether or not one allows for close inspection of handed-down “eternal truths.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But conservatives don’t have a monopoly on mythos, even though it sometimes seems that way. And no one seriously argues we should be bound to the “justice” of the past: upholding slavery, denying women the right to vote, outlawing Red Lobster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">None of America’s great progressive movements — abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, the LGBT movement, etc.— would have been conceivable without the organizing and unifying power of mythos. All these movements made appeals to timeless, universal truths: Truths not yet fully recognized by flawed humanity, no doubt, but truths that activists could justly claim as timeless and universal nonetheless, whose recognition could help us all to become more fully human. That is precisely what distinguishes the liberal or progressive vision of justice in America today. It’s what distinguishes the #MeToo movement. It’s what distinguishes Black Lives Matter. It’s what distinguishes the March for Our Lives. It’s what distinguishes the Fight For $15.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are all, in different ways, movements of the powerless to claim justice as a birthright — not a commodity or a privilege. A 15-year-old girl who was nearly raped decades ago belongs in that tradition. We can all see ourselves in her — not just women, all of us. Her story is our story, and ours to prevent from happening over and over again.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservatives have spent the last half century waging a one-sided war to take over America’s courts. Liberals have fought back only sporadically in comparison. That has to end. Whatever happens with Kavanaugh’s nomination, whatever happens with the 2018 midterms, those are only battles. We need to fight them with everything we’ve got. But we need to fight them as battles in a larger war, or else we’ll always be at a disadvantage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider the Supreme Court itself. If Kavanaugh is confirmed, there will be as many sexual abusers (and perjurers) on the Court as there are women. If he’s not, and Trump appoints someone else in his place, there will still be four justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. (Remember that George W. Bush was also elected in 2000 while losing the popular vote.) Even worse, Bush's electoral victory in 2000 only occurred because conservative Supreme Court justices intervened, and effectively selected him. (See “Jews for Buchanan” for all the gory details).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In total, Republicans have only won the national popular vote once since 1988, and that happened in 2004, when Bush ran for re-election as a "war president." Yet they’ve appointed half the sitting justices, and Kavanaugh would make that a majority. Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade by more than two to one, but Kavanaugh would be poised to ignore them. Roe is only the most high-profile example of how the court is increasingly out-of-touch with the American people. Citizens United’s roll-back of campaign finance regulations is another prime example. Kavanaugh might even mean the death knell of the Affordable Care Act,&nbsp; at a time when public opinion is moving sharply the other way, with a large majority now supporting Medicare for All.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I'm not arguing that the Supreme Court should slavishly reflect every aspect of public opinion. But neither should it be a rear guard, constantly fighting against the tide. It's only like that because conservatives have made the Supreme Court central to their politics for 50 years, using any means at all to achieve their ends, and even refusing to allow an elected president fill an open seat simply because he was a Democrat. To take the Court back, the rest of us need to be willing to do just the same: Make it a top priority, and recapture it by any means necessary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Playing nice” by accepting the rules that conservatives lay down — and set aside whenever it pleases them—is no longer an option. Consider how Republicans are treating Christine Blasey Ford even worse than they treated Anita Hill 27 years ago. The lesson should be clear. As Malvina Reynolds sang long ago, “It isn’t nice to block the doorway/ It isn’t nice to go to jail/ There are nicer ways to do it/ But the nice ways always fail.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans stole the Merrick Garland seat. There's a clear remedy: As soon as they have the power to do so, Democrats should expand the Supreme Court to 11 seats and appoint two liberals to offset that theft. Yes, that would break with tradition, but there is nothing in the Constitution to prevent it, and in our current situation, it's high to time get over handwringing about breaking norms. As Harvard Law professor Jack Balkin wrote last year:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Democratic proposal for changing the small-c constitutional norm about the Court's size would be an offer of a new norm -- "You can't steal a Supreme Court seat and expect to get away with it." Seems like a good new norm to me.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/politics/trump-federal-judges</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Kevin Schaul and Kevin Uhrmacher Sept. 4, 2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As his second appointment to the Supreme Court begins Senate hearings on Tuesday, dozens of President Trump’s picks for lower federal courts have already been installed, leaving a conservative imprint on the nation’s judiciary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In particular, the White House has filled the influential circuit court judgeships — the second-highest courts in the U.S. and last stop for many major cases — at a faster pace than his recent predecessors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More Trump picks to the circuit courts, also known as the U.S. Courts of Appeals, have been confirmed, 26 so far, than any recent president at this point in their first term. Another 13 of the 179 judgeships on the courts are vacant.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s appointments to the lower district courts have fallen short of all but President Barack Obama, though more than 100 of those positions are available to be filled by Trump-selected judges.[charts]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Supreme Court gets the bulk of the attention, but the circuit courts decide the bulk of the cases,” Arthur D. Hellman, a University of Pittsburgh law professor who studies the federal judiciary, told The Post in August. “Because the Supreme Court these days is taking so few cases, the law of the circuit is, on many, many issues, the final law for the people who live in that circuit.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several Senate moves have made it easier for Trump to fill the courts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 2013 Democratic majority, facing Republican opposition to Obama judicial picks, lowered the number of votes needed for presidential appointees and lower-court judges from 60 to 51 votes, a simple majority. This eliminated a need for bipartisanship on those nominations. (Republicans have since extended that to Supreme Court justices.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But when Republicans regained the chamber in 2015, confirmations slowed significantly. At the time, Democrats said the GOP, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), was refusing votes on dozens of judicial nominees to run out the clock on their confirmations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2016, Trump was elected with a high number of vacancies waiting to be filled.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Number of judicial vacancies in district and circuit courts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Major increases in</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">authorized judgeships approved</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate lowers confimation threshold</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOP gains</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">control of Senate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With little fanfare, Trump and McConnell reshape the nation’s circuit courts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lower vote threshold and the decision by Republicans in the Senate to sidestep blue slips, which allow senators to block a judge from their state, have made it easier for confirmations to proceed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The rules changes have also made it easier to install justices favored by conservatives at groups such as the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional lawyer at the Cato Institute, the libertarian think-tank, praised concerted efforts by White House lawyer Donald McGahn and others to fill the courts with qualified originalist judges.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Certainly at the circuit court level this has paid dividends,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The impact could be extended by the fact that Trump’s picks are generally younger than his predecessors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The median age of Trump’s circuit court judges is about 49 years old, younger than the judges put forward by the past five presidents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/how-conservatives-won-the-battle-over-the-courts/564533/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">zelzier</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Democrats await to hear whom President Donald Trump will pick on Monday to fill the vacancy left by Supreme&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, many have a feeling of pure dread.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While activists are mobilizing in the states of so-called moderate Republicans like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, hoping to sway their vote against a potentially ultraconservative replacement, there is a widespread feeling in liberal circles that the effort will fail. Even if Democrats can figure out some kind of Hail Mary move to prevent the most extreme pick from being seated, Trump will certainly be able to solidify a conservative majority on the high Court one way or another. The only real question is just how far right the court will move. The ghosts of the liberal Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren will officially be vanquished. On a number of crucial issues—abortion rights, voting rights, gay rights, partisan gerrymandering, civil liberties—a conservative majority will have immense influence on American policy for decades to come.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A consortium of students and professors based at Yale Law School founded the Federalist Society in 1982, which would prove to be the most influential originalist organization. The society helped recruit the brightest legal minds and supported them as their careers unfolded. The Federalist Society was careful to find people who could be counted on as solid conservative picks for the courts. It offered a social-professional network to connect young law students with influential senior mentors, such as the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Attorney General Edwin Meese provided support from within Ronald Reagan’s administration, encouraging the group’s efforts. Meese headed much of the administration’s selection of 400 federal judges, introducing a type of ideological profiling of potential nominees that made conservative criteria a determining factor. Meese’s insistence on the “jurisprudence of original intention” influenced many important figures, including Chief Justice John Roberts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Lawrence Tribe, a Harvard Law professor, told The New York Times in 2005, “Meese was successful in making it look like he and his disciples were carrying out the intentions of the great founders, where the liberals were making it up as they went along.” The marriage of Federalist Society ideas and Republican Party politics would continue. Lee Liberman Otis, a co-founder of the Federalist Society, gained a key role in George H. W. Bush’s White House Counsel’s Office and influenced judicial picks.The Federalist Society was not alone. Other organizations, such as the Institute for Justice and the Center for Individual Rights, joined this effort. Rightward philanthropists and organizations (Joseph Coors, Charles and David Koch, the Olin Foundation) poured money into certain law schools, such as George Mason University, whose faculty members were supportive of conservative ideas in their research and would train their students accordingly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But President George W. Bush was the first Republican president to really elevate the Federalist Society to being the prime source of advice in his judicial selections. Although Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society’s executive director, who was deeply influenced by Meese, supported Bush’s 2005 nomination of his personal attorney Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, most members of the society attacked the selection and successfully pushed for the nomination to be withdrawn. Her successor was Judge Samuel Alito, a favorite of the Federalist Society. “The Federalist Society was, when it got started, a wonderful idea,” Steven Calabresi, a law professor who worked for Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush, recounted to The New York Times in 2005. The organization achieved its goal in making “a lot of conservative thought seem as respectable and attractive as it is.” Trump’s famous list of potential candidates from the 2016 campaign, which he is also using to make his choice for Kennedy’s replacement, was formed in consultation with the Federalist Society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservatives did not rely on networking alone. The right realized that outside the presidential power to appoint, the Senate’s control over the confirmation process is essential. They learned this lesson the hard way in 1987, when Reagan’s pick for the Court, Robert Bork, a Yale Law School professor who had worked with the Federalist Society, was defeated, as Senate Democrats, who held the majority, portrayed him as an extremist.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Because 60 votes were needed at the time to confirm an appointee, Bork had no chance, and Reagan was forced to go with his second choice, Douglas Ginsburg, who withdrew after admitting to smoking marijuana, and then finally with Anthony Kennedy. Republicans never forgot this lesson, and ever since, they have been willing to ruthlessly use their legislative power to influence the confirmation process.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During President Barack Obama’s tenure, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and his caucus delayed and obstructed a historically unprecedented number of judicial appointments. The obstruction became so great that Democratic Senator Harry Reid took the historic step in 2013, when his party controlled the chamber, of jettisoning the filibuster against non–Supreme Court appointments as well as Cabinet officials. But Republicans regained control of the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections, allowing them to block Obama’s judicial picks entirely. According to Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University, “GOP foot dragging on Obama nominees for both appellate and district court vacancies has far outstripped Democrats’ slowdown of Bush nominees between 2003 and 2008 (under both unified and divided party control).” Neither record, she added, was as great as the Republican delays on nominations by Bill Clinton’s administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 114th Congress, Senate Republicans confirmed the lowest number of judicial nominations since the final year of Harry Truman’s presidency, filling only 22 of Obama’s nominations from January 2015 through December 2016. “There was an almost total breakdown of confirmations once the Republicans took control of the Senate,” argues Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution expert on the U.S. judicial system. After Scalia’s death in 2016, McConnell revealed how far Republicans would go to influence the Court when his party refused to even meet with Merrick Garland, Obama’s selection to fill Scalia’s seat. The pick received no hearings, no vote, nothing. McConnell’s office announced that the majority leader would not even hold a “perfunctory meeting” with Garland, but wished him well. “It is a president’s constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate’s constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent,” McConnell boldly stated in face of criticism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[NUCLEAR OPTION]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans would simply wait until a Republican president was in office. Then in 2017, when Democrats filibustered President Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch, Reid’s party paid the price for his decision. Despite the Republicans’ age-old talk about the importance of protecting minority rights in the Senate, McConnell eliminated the filibuster on Supreme Court nominations to push Gorsuch’s nomination through. “This will be the first, and last, partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court justice,” the Kentucky conservative said on the floor. The Republican Senate has also approved the president’s appellate nominees at a faster rate than all other recent presidents. Under Trump, there has been much more consent from the Republican Senate than advise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans realized that conservative organizations and hardball legislative politics were not enough on their own. Certain landmark decisions would be extremely difficult to overturn given stare decisis, the doctrine that means, generally, that prior decisions by the Court should be adhered to. Regarding abortion, for example, Republican legislators have been much more focused on slowly gutting the ability to get an abortion than on attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade altogether. Republican Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois was one of the architects of this strategy. In 1976, he successfully added an amendment to legislation that prohibited the use of Medicaid funds to pay for an abortion, except when the life of the mother was in danger or in cases of incest and rape. This strategy has been replicated numerous times as Congress has expanded the reach of the Hyde amendment beyond Medicaid, while Republican legislatures have enacted similar restrictions on government funding for abortion on the state level.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The strategic move by conservatives away from overturning Roe v. Wade and toward death by a thousand cuts has allowed conservative justices to uphold legislation that undercuts the right to get an abortion without restrictions. Most recently, Justice Gorsuch was one member of the five-person majority that voted to uphold a California law stipulating that pregnancy crisis centers that do not provide abortions don’t have to tell patients they can obtain the procedure elsewhere and that the centers don’t have to disclose whether they have a medical license. When Republicans like Senator Collins or Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina promise that they won’t vote for a nominee who would overturn Roe, their statement is somewhat meaningless, because the real action has been on legislation that gradually erodes the meaning of the right to get an abortion rather than on simply overturning the decision itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To reach the point where conservatives are today, they also had to swallow some of their principles. One of the most important and influential decisions that conservative organizations and Republican politicians have made along the way to Monday’s pick has been supporting a president who will follow through on their judicial agenda. Evangelical organizations, which have historically been politically pragmatic when deciding which politicians to support, and their Republican allies took the most strikingly hypocritical stand by working for the candidacy and presidency of a person whose personal behavior contradicts so much of what they claim to stand for. As candidate, Trump made a very clear promise that he would appoint nominees they supported, and he followed through on his promise with Gorsuch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evangelical activists are not the only conservatives to live by this whatever-it-takes principle. Republican Senators have been doing the same since 2016. The #NeverTrump movement within the GOP has turned out to be one of the greatest fantasies of American politics. Congressional Republicans have been willing to stand by and support Trump, aside from few verbal reprimands, as long as he does what they want. Appointing conservative justices has been a central goal for the GOP. Trump is delivering, so they, too, are willing to withstand controversy and instability.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reshaping the Supreme Court, one of the most consequential accomplishments that a president and his or her party can achieve, is a massive political undertaking. Conservatives have demonstrated that winning this kind of institutional battle takes years, even decades, and requires a ruthless disposition.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Frustrated with their inability to maintain solid control over Congress, and convinced that liberals influence most key institutions, including universities, conservatives set out to do what was necessary to build a court system that would protect the constitutional values of the right. Assuming that President Trump follows through on his promises to them on Monday, and that Democrats can’t block the nomination, they are about to enjoy the fruits of their efforts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nb blue team truce?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/nyc-divestment-2524285373.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Tide Is Turning': Cheers Erupt for NYC's Suit Against Fossil Fuel Giants and for Divestment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Andrea Germanos</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate advocates hailed what they say is a "watershed" moment on Wednesday following two announcements by New York City: that the city would seek to divest its pension funds from fossil fuels within five years, and that it filed suit against give five fossil fuel giants for their role in driving the climate crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is a first-in-the-nation step to protect our future and our planet—for this generation and the next," said Comptroller Scott M. Stringer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stringer announced last month that he would soon bring a proposal to the trustees of the pension funds that included divestment. Following through on that promise, a statement from the city released Wednesday says that he and Mayor Bill de Blasio "will submit a joint resolution to pension fund trustees" to begin the steps needed to purge the funds from the dirty industry, which will first entail an analysis on the financial impacts to be carried out by the City Comptroller's Bureau of Asset Management.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">350.org co-founder Bill McKibben said in a tweet responding to the news that it was "One of the biggest days in 30 years of the climate fight."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The city's five pension funds hold $189 billion in assets, and roughly $5 billion of that amount are held in the securities of over 190 fossil fuel companies, the city said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new lawsuit names BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell and seeks billions of dollars in damages for harm already inflicted on the city as a result of the climate crisis as well for preparing for effects yet to come, including "imminent threats to its property, its infrastructure, and the health and safety of its residents."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New York's lawsuit follows similar suits filed by seven cities and counties in California.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The city's statement references the industry's deliberate misinformation campaign to cover up the effects of fossil fuels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ICN portal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/content/choke-hold</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This yearlong investigation explores the ways the fossil fuel industry has fought to protect its central role in providing America's energy. Each Choke Hold article examines one particular front in the industry's battle to block stronger environmental regulation and action on climate change—its litigation fights, campaign contributions, public relations, control over science and more. Together these articles tell the story of the fossil fuel industry's inordinate influence across society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">big win gop:&nbsp; pence tie break</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate voted Tuesday night to kill a controversial rule that would have allowed Americans to file class-action suits against banks instead of being forced in many cases into private arbitration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The move by the Senate followed a similar action by the House in July to rescind the rule. President Trump is expected to sign the repeal legislation, providing a major victory for the financial industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vice President Mike Pence cast the deciding vote after the Senate tied 50-50. All but two Republicans — John Kennedy of Louisiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — voted to repeal the rule. No Democrats or independents supported the move.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The White House said Trump “applauds” Congress for voting to repeal the rule, which would have given consumers “fewer options for quickly and efficiently resolving financial disputes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The rule was unveiled in July by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and praised by Democrats and consumer advocates as giving average people more power to fight industry abuses, such as Wells Fargo & Co.’s creation of millions of unauthorized accounts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But banking lobbyists argued that the rule would unleash a flood of class-action lawsuits, and that the cost of fighting those suits would be passed on to consumers. Republicans quickly moved to repeal the regulation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The entire purpose of this rule is to promote class-action litigation and stop arbitration resolution when there is a dispute,” said Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised the repeal vote, saying the rule “would have benefited the class-action trial bar at the expense of American consumers and businesses alike.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Set to take effect in March, the rule would not have banned clauses in checking account, credit card and other banking agreements that say disputes between companies and customers must be dealt with privately or in small claims court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, there would have been a ban on provisions that block consumers from banding together to bring class-action cases. The CFPB argued that such cases help hold banks accountable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The determinations of an arbitrator are binding and consumer advocates say most decisions favor the company. The private proceedings also allow banks to deal with individual problems quietly rather than address widespread abuses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bureau Director Richard Cordray called the Senate vote “a giant setback for every consumer in this country” and urged Trump to veto the repeal legislation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It robs consumers of their most effective legal tool against corporate wrongdoing,” Cordray said. “As a result, companies like Wells Fargo and Equifax remain free to break the law without fear of legal blowback from their customers.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-public-trust-principle-can-defend-human-rights-against-fracking</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...ENVIRONMENT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How the Public Trust Principle Can Defend Human Rights Against Fracking</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pure drinking water and breathable air are not privileges bestowed upon citizens by the government, but the rightful property of the people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Mary Christina Wood, Rance Shaw / Center for Humans and NatureJune 1, 2017, 12:00 PM GMT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In her essay, “The View From 31,000 Feet: A Philosopher Looks at Fracking,” Kathleen Dean Moore posits there is a “human right to the material conditions of ongoing life, including clean water, clean air, and nontoxic soil.”[1] She describes the insatiable and constant taking of the fracking industry, demanding “land, livelihood, public property, private property, highway rights of way, democracy, health, sea beds, birdsong, silence, and the thriving of our children.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, then, how does (or should) the law restrain fracking, which the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has called “history seeming to repeat itself: an industry, offering the very real prospect of jobs and other important economic benefits, seek[ing] to exploit” public resources?[2]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The public trust doctrine, an ancient but evolving principle, shifts the legal paradigm from one of political discretion to one of fiduciary obligation. Thisprinciple “ranks so fundamental to citizens” that scholars commonly describe it as protecting core human rights.[3]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Statutory discretion in natural resource management</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 1970s, at the inception of the modern environmental era, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Forest Management Act, and other key statutes in response to broad public demands for regulation. Over the ensuing decades, however, powerful industries have largely captured regulatory agencies, bending such agencies to industries’ own economic interests. Whereas Congress passed environmental statutes with the overriding goal of protecting the environment, the environmental agencies now predominantly use the statutes to legalize destruction of the environment. For example, as a 2006 Congressional Research Service brief revealed, less than 0.3 percent of the 85,000 yearly wetlands permit applications are denied under the Clean Water Act.[4]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Congress too promotes environmental damage. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 contains the now-infamous “Halliburton Loophole,” which essentially exempts fracking from the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and CERCLA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unable to rely on federal agency or congressional protection, some local governments have taken measures to curtail fracking within their limited jurisdictional boundaries. In some states, like Colorado, the Supreme Court has ruled that local fracking bans are preempted when there is a conflicting state statute.[5] But in Pennsylvania, a state with an Environmental Rights Amendment to the constitution, the Supreme Court ruled that the legislature could not enact laws preventing protections of “resources essential to life, health, and liberty.”[6] In a plurality opinion, Chief Justice Castille wrote that the local governments had a public trust duty to safeguard essential resources, and that the state legislature could not deprive the local government of the means to carry out that duty. The reasoning applies to other states as well. The Public Trust Doctrine, as a fundamental attribute of sovereignty, offers a different legal framework in which political discretion succumbs to fiduciary obligation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The public trust principle</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Public Trust Doctrine dates to the ancient Roman Institutes of Justinian. The doctrine has three tenets: government is trustee, current and future generations of citizens are co-beneficiaries, and crucial natural resources comprise the corpus of an enduring ecological trust. In the seminal American Public Trust Doctrine case, Illinois Central Railroad, Co. v. Illinois, the United States Supreme Court said that lands below navigable waters (the traditional trust property) are held in trust by the government because they are “a subject of public concern to the whole people of the State.”[7] Likewise, ground waters, air, and atmosphere—resources threatened by fracking—are essential to the citizenry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The trust principle has constitutional underpinnings and carries the legal force necessary to overcome even statutory law in compelling circumstances. As trustee, all levels of government must abide by fiduciary duties, some of which require affirmative action, whereas others proscribe certain actions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Case law reflects trust duties that are both substantive and procedural. The six substantive duties require a trustee to: (1) protect the corpus; (2) conserve the natural inheritance of future generations; (3) maximize the societal value of natural resources; (4) restore the trust corpus where it has been damaged; (5) recover natural resource damages from third parties that have injured public trust assets; and (6) refrain from privatizing trust resources except in limited circumstances.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">..</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/scotus-isnt-only-court-we-should-be-worried-about-trumps-america</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">capt 12/16</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">See RICO tobacco and GW</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kids win big in Wa Or, Mass</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/17/mass-climate-change-lawsuit/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.globalpossibilities.org/landmark-human-rights-case-against-worlds-biggest-fossil-fuel-firms-pushes-on/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Landmark Human Rights Case Against World’s Biggest Fossil Fuel Firms Pushes On</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dec 29, 2016 by Casey Coates Danson</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is the first-ever human rights violations case due to climate injustice alleged against carbon majors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Ping Manongdo / Eco-Business</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">December 24, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Philippines Commission on Human Rights has announced that it is moving forward with the next steps in the world’s first-ever case against major fossil fuel companies for alleged human rights abuses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The commission is to take to task oil giants such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Total, BHP Billiton, Suncor and ConocoPhillips for their alleged role in causing death and financial loss on a massive scale as a result of climate-induced disasters in the archipelago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A month after concluding the first phase of their investigation, which looked at scientific evidence linking climate change and fossil fuel operations, CHR commissioner Roberto Eugenio T. Cadiz, who leads the national investigative body for the case, said they are now ready to push forward with public hearings, beginning in April 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) devastation. Many houses were wiped out by container vans that were pushed by the typhoon from a nearby port in Tacloban, Leyte, Philippines. Image: Asian Development Bank, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cadiz said they have secured responses from 20 out of the 47 fossil fuel companies involved in the case as of December 8.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The responses were either sent to CHR directly or to the Business and Human Rights Resource Center (BHRRC), a New York-based advocacy group that tracks the human rights policies and performance of businesses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a letter addressed to BHRRC, American company ConocoPhillips, which claims to be the world’s largest independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company, said they challenged the jurisdiction of the legal proceedings arguing that their company does not have operations in the Philippines.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We operate responsibly and take climate change issues seriously; managing greenhouse gas emissions in our operations and integrating climate-change related activities and goals into our business planning,” Sabrina Watkins, ConocoPhillips’ head of sustainable development, said in the statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Repsol, a global energy producer based in Madrid, confirmed in a letter sent to BHRRC on November 8, that they sent a reply to the CHR but are unable to disclose details due to the confidentiality rules of the government body.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian company Lukoil for their part said that they have now developed and are implementing what they call a Biodiversity Protection Program focused on “undoing harm” to marine resources and “reclaiming oil contaminated land.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The company further said that it has been aiming to prevent water pollution by using “zero pollution” technology in its off-shore operations since 1997. With this technology, not a single item of waste will pass into the water, the company said in a statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The CHR said the petitioners would be ready with a consolidated response by February 14, 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">win monsanto australia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/12/monsanto-lawsuit-gmo-contamination/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/05/heathrow-13-climate-prisoners/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Later this month, a judge in the UK is set to jail 13 non-violent protestors who occupied one of the runways at London Heathrow in July last year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The protest, the first ever on a Heathrow runway, lasted six hours and caused the delay or cancellation of some 25 flights.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A judge in the UK is set to jail 13 non-violent protestors who occupied one of the runways at London Heathrow in July last year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was carried out by activists from Plane Stupid, who are opposed to airport expansion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In their trial last month the activists—known as the Heathrow 13—tried to argue the “necessity defense” in that their actions were necessary due to the “airport’s contribution to life-threatening climate change.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is the same defense that the so-called Delta 5 used recently in the U.S. after they blocked a crude by oil terminal in Washington State.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But whereas the judge in the Delta 5 trial praised the defendants for being “part of the solution to the problem of climate change” and “quite frankly, the kind of tireless advocates we need in this country,” the judge in the Heathrow 13 trial sees it very differently.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">#ClimateTrial of the #Delta5 -brave activists argue that blocking crude oil train WAS necessary to defend climate https://t.co/KDnNJPOYOk</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— RAN (@RAN) January 12, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the end of last month, the judge convicted the 13 of aggravated trespass and being airside without lawful authority. She asked them to return in three weeks on Feb. 24 for sentencing. The defendants have been told to prepare for immediate custodial sentences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They could spend up to three months in prison.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to their convictions, the Heathrow 13 issued a statement:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Today’s judgement demonstrates that the legal system does not yet recognize that climate defense is not an offense. We took action because we saw that it was sorely needed. When the democratic, legislative and processes have failed, it takes the actions of ordinary people to change them.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is now a growing campaign to urge the judge to reconsider: Today’s Independent newspaper reports how the judge is being “urged not to act on her threat to jail 13 peaceful environmental protesters—as campaigners warn that the British legal system’s long-standing tolerance towards non-violent direct action is under threat.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Late last night, King County Superior Court Judge Hollis R. Hill issued a groundbreaking ruling in the unprecedented case of eight youth petitioners who requested that the Washington Department of Ecology write a carbon emissions rule that protects the atmosphere for their generation and those to come....“In this important ruling, Judge Hill has made it very clear what [the Department of] Ecology must do when promulgating the Clean Air Rule: preserve, protect and enhance air quality for present and future generations and uphold the constitutional rights of these young people,” said Western Environmental Law Center attorney Andrea Rodgers. “We will hold Ecology accountable every step of the way to make sure that Judge Hill’s powerful words are put into action. This is a huge victory for our children and for the climate movement. To Gov. Inslee, we hope you take this message with you to Paris and heed Judge Hill’s finding that ‘if ever there were a time to recognize through action this right to preservation of a healthful and pleasant environment, the time is now.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This case is one of several similar state and international cases, all supported by Our Children’s Trust, seeking the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate. Cases brought by youth to protect the atmosphere are pending before trial judges in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Colorado, and before appellate courts in Massachusetts and Oregon...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/20/stem-tide-climate-change/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/20/stem-tide-climate-change/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WA state:&nbsp; In a landmark decision, Judge Hill declared “[the youths’] very survival depends upon the will of their elders to act now, decisively and unequivocally, to stem the tide of global warming … before doing so becomes first too costly and then too late.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Highlighting inextricable relationships between navigable waters and the atmosphere, and finding that separating the two is “nonsensical,” the judge found the public trust doctrine mandates that the state act through its designated agency “to protect what it holds in trust.” The court confirmed what the Washington youth and youth across the nation have been arguing in courts of law, that “[t]he state has a constitutional obligation to protect the public’s interest in natural resources held in trust for the common benefit of the people.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://carbonmajors.org/download-the-study/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A few weeks ago the first ever human rights legal action seeking the accountability of the 50 big polluters was launched. Filed by Filipino typhoon survivors and several environmental organizations, it demands that the Philippines Human Rights Commission (CHR) investigate and acknowledge the complicity of 50 investor-owned fossil fuel companies in causing extreme weather events....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The top 50 investor-owned polluters under public scrutiny are taken from a list of 90 entitieswho, according to a report by Rick Heede, are responsible for 63 percent of the carbon dioxide and methane emitted between 1751 and 2010.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coalitions of affected communities are developing jurisprudence that recognizes impacts of climate change as a breach of human rights. If successful, this recognition will lay the foundations for what is really required: attribution and action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The petition was submitted on behalf of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement and other local NGOs, with the support of the International Trade Union Confederation, Amnesty International, NGO legal experts and thousands of individuals. The broad coalition was put together because success in fighting climate change will only occur when organizations and individuals join hands across the globe to demand climate justice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">--</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rather than attribute emissions to nations, the study aggregates historical emissions according to carbon producing entities themselves. Heede concludes that nearly two-thirds of carbon dioxide emitted since the 1750s can be traced to the 90 largest fossil fuel and cement producers, most of which still operate. online</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The research attributes 63 percent of the carbon dioxide and methane emitted between 1751 and 2010 to just 90 entities. Fifty are investor-owned companies such as Chevron, Peabody, Shell, and BHP Billiton. Thirty-one are state-owned companies such as Saudi Aramco and Statoil, and nine are government-run industries in countries such as China, Poland, and the former Soviet Union. The research also classified the 90 entities according to type of fossil fuel extracted and marketed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are 56 oil and natural gas companies, and 37 coal producers. In addition, the CO2 emissions from seven cement manufacturers are included.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Top 20 investor- and state-owned entities and attributed CO2 & CH4 emissions 2010</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Entity<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>2010 EmissionsMtCO2e<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Cumulative 1854-2010MtCO2e<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>Percent of Global1751-2010</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. Chevron, USA<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>423<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>51,096<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>3.52%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. ExxonMobil, USA<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>655<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>46,672<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>3.22%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3. Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>1,550<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>46,033<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>3.17%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4. BP, UK<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>554<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>35,837<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>2.47%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5. Gazprom, Russian Federation<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>1,371<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>32,136<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>2.22%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6. Royal Dutch/Shell, Netherlands<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>478<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>30,751<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>2.12%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7. National Iranian Oil Company<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>867<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>29,084<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>2.01%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8. Pemex, Mexico<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>602<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>20,025<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>1.38%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9. ConocoPhillips, USA<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>359<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>16,866<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>1.16%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">10. Petroleos de Venezuela<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>485<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>16,157<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>1.11%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11. Coal India<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>830<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>15,493<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>1.07%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12. Peabody Energy, USA<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>519<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>12,432<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>0.86%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">13. Total, France<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>398<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>11,911<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>0.82%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">14. PetroChina, China<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>614<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>10,564<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>0.73%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">15. Kuwait Petroleum Corp.<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>323<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>10,503<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>0.73%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">16. Abu Dhabi NOC, UAE<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>387<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>9,672<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>0.67%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">17. Sonatrach, Algeria<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>386<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>9,263<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>0.64%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">18. Consol Energy, Inc., USA<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>160<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>9,096<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>0.63%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">19. BHP-Billiton, Australia<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>320<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>7,606<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>0.52%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">20. Anglo American, United Kingdom<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>242<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>7,242<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>0.50%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Top 20 IOCs & SOEs<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>11,523<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>428,439<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>29.54%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Top 40 IOCs & SOEs<span style="white-space:pre"> </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">546,767<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>37.70%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All 81 IOCs & SOEs<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>18,524<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>602,491<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>41.54%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Total 90 Carbon Majors<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>27,946<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>914,251<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>63.04%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Total Global Emissions<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>36,026<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>1,450,332<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>100.00%</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/environment/kids-win-landmark-climate-battle-against-washington-state-government</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kids Win Landmark Climate Battle Against Washington State Government</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For the first time in the U.S., a court of law has ordered a state agency to consider the best available science when deciding to regulate CO2 emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Deirdre Fulton / Common Dreams June 26, 2015</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Citing what she called the "historical lack of political will to respond adequately to the urgent and dire acceleration of global warming," a judge in Washington state handed a group of eight young petitioners a landmark win this week, ordering the Department of Ecology (ECY) to consider statewide reductions in carbon dioxide emissions based on best available science.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The effect of this decision is that for the first time in the United States, a court of law has ordered a state agency to consider the most current and best available climate science when deciding to regulate carbon dioxide emissions," said Andrea Rodgers of the Western Environmental Law Center, attorney for the youth petitioners, who are in elementary, middle, and high school.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The kids acted with the help of a NASA climate scientist as well as Our Children's Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit orchestrating a global, youth-driven legal campaign to establish the right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Big Picture:&nbsp; SCOTUS courts grew into role on Const with Marbury v Madison; after Civil War corps, esp railroads at times got courts to expandtheir powerv maybe some reverals in New Deal (hence ct "packing")</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Powell called for right mirror to ACLU (tho see Citizen United)&nbsp; also national republican lawyers org</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tort Reform part of Defund the Left; but scotus has undermined class action lawsuits; corps rig rules at state/fed level, overruling local/cty ordinances</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">scotus gives personhood rights to corps, which allows them to lie, control info, use "takings" to scare green regulations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also, corps have huge expensive law firms to SLAPP activists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also Coors et al funded legal foundations (often in concert with wise use, since the green used clean air, water, esa) to force gov't and corps to protect ppl and environment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until Bork, judge appt based on basic competence; nuke option</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Legal firms become buffer (lobbyist [govt affairs]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FREE judge dude ranch Montana</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5/15</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last month the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar, upholding a Florida law that bans judges and judicial candidates from personally soliciting campaign donations. At issue was public confidence in the judiciary, given that lawyers and potential litigants are more likely than average citizens to donate to judges' campaigns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Campaign contributions can create an appearance and risk of favoritism," saidMatthew Menendez, counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a legal watchdog group housed at the New York University School of Law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2009, Florida judicial candidate Lanell Williams-Yulee signed a letter asking for campaign contributions. The Florida Supreme Court reprimanded and fined Williams-Yulee for violating the state law banning such a solicitation; Williams-Yulee appealed, arguing that the ruling violated her free speech rights. After the case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, asserted that a judicial candidate's First Amendment rights are not compromised by "a narrowly tailored restriction like the one at issue here."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The map below shows whether each U.S. state holds judicial elections and, if so, whether the state bans solicitation of campaign contributions by judges and to what degree.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today 39 states hold some kind of election for judges. Of those, 25 states* including Florida place broad limits on personal solicitation of campaign contributions by judicial candidates, while five have more narrow bans. The Supreme Court's decision upholds all 30 of these restrictions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ruling also opens the door for similar laws in the nine states that hold judicial elections but do not prohibit judges from soliciting campaign cash. Four of those states are in the South, the most of any U.S. region; they are Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. The Brennan Center plans to focus attention on these nine states in an effort to pass bans there; it will also advocate for other initiatives that make judicial elections more democratic such as public financing of candidates and reforming judicial selection.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such reforms have become even more critical since the Supreme Court's 2010Citizens United decision, which dramatically increased money in judicial elections by allowing unlimited donations to outside groups. In a pollcommissioned by the Brennan Center and Justice at Stake, nearly 90 percent of voters said they think fundraising and money in judicial elections are affecting judges' decisions on the bench.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/The-Lewis-Powell-Memo/judicial/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lewis Powell saw that corporate interests could gain greatly by using the judicial system to their advantage, yet to make the judiciary more sympathetic to business interests, he knew corporations would have to plan and engage in a long-term, multi-dimensional strategy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Powell Memo on Judicial Influence:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"[T]he judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change. [...] This is a vast area of opportunity for the Chamber, if it is willing to undertake the role of spokesman for American business and if, in turn, business is willing to provide the funds. As with respect to scholars and speakers, the Chamber would need a highly competent staff of lawyers. In special situations it should be authorized to engage, to appear as counsel amicus in the Supreme Court, lawyers of national standing and reputation. The greatest care should be exercised in selecting the cases in which to participate, or the suits to institute. But the opportunity merits the necessary effort."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(Direct link to this quote in the Powell Memo)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The big business reaction to Lewis Powell’s judicial and legal strategy was swift. Within a few years, nearly a dozen corporate-funded legal foundations were created. The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) was formed in California in 1973 to counter public-interest law firms and represent the interests of business and private property holders against environmental regulations. PLF’s prospectus quoted the Powell memo at length. (Kim Phillips-Fein, “Invisible Hands,” p. 162).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When asked for his opinion of the “most critical” area of public interest law, PLF’s then-executive legal director replied, “environmental law,” citing the firm’s support for the use of DDT, the construction of a dam and reservoir project, the use of herbicides in national forests and the use of public grazing lands without environmental impact review. The early cases established a clear pattern for PLF and its followers at the Mountain States Legal Foundation and other regionally named corporate defenders. Environmental cases would be a priority and the foundations’ positions in such cases would invariably be those of their business benefactors, including Monsanto, Weyerhaeuser, Gulf Oil, ARCO, Ford and other companies (Houck, "With Charity for All," pp. 1461-1462). The work of these groups also supported the Wise Use movement; radical property rights activists and corporate front groups that attacked environmental laws and regulations on behalf of landowners, ranchers and the oil industry (Helvarg, The War Against the Greens).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The conservative backlash against alleged liberal influence over the law went well beyond the corporate agenda that grew directly out of Powell’s analysis, but there were also tensions between the two. Corporate legal campaigns were primarily self-interested, practical and designed to get both immediate and longer-term results. The conservative legal movement that got its start in the 1970s was more ideologically driven; its greatest successes would take decades, and sometimes came about through indirect means (Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the juncture between these two was the “law and economics” school, with leading proponents such as Richard Posner at the University of Chicago and George Mason University’s Henry Manne. Manne organized seminars for federal judges through his Law and Economics Center, with support from the Olin Foundation, which also backed some of the leading “second generation” conservative public policy law firms, like the Center for Individual Rights. The foundation’s chairman, John M Olin, was inspired by Powell’s memo to write to William Baroody at the American Enterprise Institute: “The Powell Memorandum gives a reason for a well organized effort to re-establish the validity and importance of the American free enterprise system.” (“Invisible Hands,” Kim Phillips-Fein)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For its part, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also eventually followed Powell’s advice by creating two legal groups that have carried out a multi-decade legal strategy -- the National Chamber Litigation Center (NCLC) and the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR). NCLC served as the Chamber’s law firm, using aggressive and strategic litigation to challenge regulations and laws. Entering 134 new cases of significance to the business community in 2009, for example, the NCLC helped to secure 52 victories.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) coordinated one of the Chamber’s flagship priorities in the post-Powell era -- the push for “tort reform.” The tort 'reform' campaign was so successful that by 2006, the American Lawyer proclaimed, “It’s Over,” explaining that “the power of the plaintiffs bar is on the wane in this country, and will be for a long time to come.” ILR, along with the American Tort Reform Association (funded by the tobacco, chemical and drug industries, along with the American Medical Association), created a “public relations masterpiece” that demonized trial lawyers, replaced state judges hostile to business interests, and mobilized popular support for business-friendly laws. (See Frankel, “It’s Over”) The campaign erected a variety of judicial and regulatory barriers against plaintiff attorneys and their clients – i.e., the victims of corporate crime and malfeasance -- including caps on punitive and non-economic damages, the abolition of “joint and several liability,” and limits on class action lawsuits.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This push for tort 'reform' has also been a legal priority for various industries. According to a document produced by one corporate law firm, for instance, the tobacco industry’s tort reform budget for 1995 alone was $21.8 million (see Covington & Burling Tort Reform Project Budget).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.S. Chamber has used the momentum built by decades of successful tort reform to brazenly argue for policies that would shield corporations from having to pay when they are responsible for cases of massive damage. For instance, after the 2010 BP Horizon disaster the Chamber arguedthat the $75 million liability cap should not be lifted retroactively to make BP pay for damages from the oil gusher. This position drew criticism from a variety of expert observers, including Ken Feinberg, the manager of BP’s oil spill compensation fund.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of the landmark changes in the law that have come about through support from business and conservative interests in recent decades have been used to bolster other strategies outlined by Powell in his memo. An example is the dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine for media, which was introduced to ensure public interest voices would balance commercial interests as part of the bargain for corporate broadcasters' free license to use the People’s airwaves.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another significant shift in the law since Powell’s memo was circulated has been the gradual expansion of corporate constitutional rights (referred to by some business groups as “business civil liberties”), especially in the realms of commercial and political speech. The most infamous example is the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In the commercial sphere, companies have similarly used corporate speech doctrines to challenge various restrictions on corporate advertising (e.g. direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs for off-label uses), limits on media ownership, and product safety labeling requirements (e.g. cigarettes and genetically modified foods).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporate constitutional rights are regularly claimed (with the implicit threat of litigation) in opposition to new or proposed regulations. One recent example came during recent attacks on regulations created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform package, which contained a provision requiring that companies report their use of tin, gold and other minerals that can be traced back to the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of the Congo. In its comments to the SEC, Tiffany & Co. claimed the SEC rules would “compel speech in a manner that violates the First Amendment.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">References and More Information:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nan Aron, "Justice for Sale: Shortchanging The Public Interest for Private Gain.” Washington, DC: Alliance for Justice, 1993.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oliver A. Houck, “With Charity for All,” Yale Law Journal, Volume 93, No. 8, July 1984. More information available at: http://research.greenpeaceusa.org/?a=view&d=6000.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steven M. Teles, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law. Princeton University Press, 2008. More information available at:http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Rise_of_the_Conservative_Legal_Movem.html?id=MTps-NK20jAC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alison Frankel, “It’s Over: Tort reformers, business interests, and plaintiffs lawyers themselves have helped kill the mass torts bonanza.” The American Lawyer, December 1, 2006. Available at:http://www.law.com/jsp/PubArticle.jsp?id=1165320496651.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan. New York: Norton, 2009. More information available at:http://books.google.com/books/about/Invisible_hands.html?id=CcU7z9jLqXcC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Helvarg, The War Against the Greens. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994. More information available at: http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Greens-Wise-Use-Movement/dp/1555663281.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Covington & Burling Tort Reform Project Budget, Budget, October 3, 1995, available in the Tobacco Legacy Documents’ online archive at: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/khu28d00.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert Weissman, “First Amendment Follies,” Multinational Monitor, May, 1998. Available at:http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm1998/98may/corp3.html.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patrick Dorsey, Sr. VP and General Counsel of Tiffany & Co., comments to the SEC, dated February 22, 2011. Available at: http://www.sec.gov/comments/df-title-xv/specialized-disclosures/specializeddisclosures-17.pdf.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert L Kerr, The Rights of Corporate Speech: Mobil Oil and the Legal Development of the Voice of Big Business, LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2005. More information available at:http://www.amazon.com/Rights-Corporate-Speech-Development-Scholarship/dp/1593320701.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert L Kerr, The Corporate Free-Speech Movement: Cognitive Feudalism and the Endangered Marketplace of Ideas, LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2008. More information available at:http://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Free-speech-Movement-Endangered-Marketplace/dp/1593322933.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stephanie Mencimer,Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies are Taking Away Your Right to Sue. NY: Free Press, 2011. More information available at:http://www.amazon.com/Blocking-Courthouse-Door-Republican-Corporate/dp/0743277007.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chris Young, "Corporations, pro-business nonprofits foot bill for judicial seminars," Center for Public Integrity, March 28, 2013.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People for the American Way, "The Rise of the Corporate Court." (2010)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Community Rights Counsel, "Using Federal Courts to Attack Community and Environmental Protections"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Commonweal Institute:&nbsp; "Conservative Movement" web site.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American Constitution Society&nbsp; and the Alliance for Justice are two groups that organize lawyers, students and others to push back against the pro-corporate conservative legal movement that has undermined community and environmental rights. Be sure to read Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speech to the ACS 2013 annual convention, "Corporate Capture of The Federal Courts"&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To understand how far the courts have moved away from environmental protections, we recommend Christopher's Stone's book "Should Trees Have Standing" or the law review it is based upon, which was cited by Justice William O. Douglas in his famous dissenting opinion in the Mineral King decision -- Sierra Club v. Morton 405 U.S. 727. Douglas argued that natural resources ought to have standing to pursue their own protection.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">several articles:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mother Jones</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is Your Judge for Sale?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thanks to Karl Rove and Citizens United, judicial elections have been overtaken by secretive interest groups, nasty ads, and the constant hustle for campaign cash.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Andy Kroll | Tue Oct. 28, 2014 6:00 AM EDT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social Title:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thanks to Karl Rove and Citizens United, your judge may be for sale</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social Dek:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Inside America's increasingly tainted judicial elections</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 30-second TV spot is stark and brutal. First it shows the bespectacled face of candidate Louis Butler, then a grainy mug shot of an ex-con. "Louis Butler worked to put criminals on the street," the narrator warns [1], "like Reuben Lee Mitchell, who raped an 11-year-old girl with learning disabilities." After Mitchell's release from prison, the narrator continues, he raped again. "Can Wisconsin families feel safe with Louis Butler?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This attack ad wasn't from a bitterly fought congressional race. It was from a 2008 campaign for state Supreme Court justice—a position that until recently was considered above the fray of partisan politics. Butler, the first African American Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin history, was defending his seat against a trial court judge whose campaign tactic recalled the GOP's infamous Willie Horton hit job on Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign. Long before ascending to his state's highest court, Butler had been assigned as Reuben Lee Mitchell's public defender—he wasn't the judge in the case, as the nasty ad implied.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Butler's opponent, Michael Gableman, had been showered with campaign donations from business leaders, who were keenly aware of Butler's role in two decisions. One was a 4-3 ruling to strike down a $350,000 limit on so-called pain-and-suffering damages [2] in malpractice suits. The other held that if an individual harmed by lead paint exposure couldn't identify the producer, then multiple paint companies could be held liable under a legal theory known as "risk contribution [3].</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[4]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read our graphical explainer [4] on how dark money is taking over judicial elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Butler's and Gableman's campaigns spent a combined total of $1.2 million on the race, outside groups aligned with the US Chamber of Commerce and the state's labor unions spent $3.6 million, funding 89 percent of all the TV ads. Butler was the first sitting justice to get booted from the court in 40 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By 2011, with Wisconsin reeling from political battles over Gov. Scott Walker's union-busting agenda, the next Supreme Court race was equally ugly. This time it was conservative Justice David Prosser defending his seat; a misleading ad [5] from a partisan group backing his opponent claimed that Prosser, as a district attorney in 1978, had helped cover up sexual abuse of two young boys at the hands of a Catholic priest. (The abuse had only emerged years later; the victims called the ad "offensive, inaccurate, and out of context.")</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Prosser successfully defended his seat, he says that the election—which saw nearly $5 million in total campaign spending—poisoned relationships on the court. The tension boiled over weeks later, when Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley, a liberal justice, engaged in an argument that got physical as four of their fellow justices looked on. Bradley claimed Prosser choked her, while Prosser said he raised his hands in self-defense as Bradley charged at him. In police interviews [6], two conservative justices sided with Prosser, and two liberal justices with Bradley. Investigations by the county sheriff, the local DA, and a special independent prosecutor all cleared Prosser of any wrongdoing, but the controversy still festers. When I spoke with Prosser in September, written in chalk on the sidewalk outside the state Capitol was an invitation to visit him for "free chokes."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"They wanted to make sure we were punished for our decision and that other judges witnessed that," says former Iowa Supreme Court Justice Marsha Ternus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bitter, costly judicial elections are by no means unique to Wisconsin. These days, as more candidates for the bench face rough contests—buffeted increasingly by outside money, thanks to the US Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United—state judges around the country often raise six- and seven-figure sums, mount statewide campaigns, and fend off attack ads from groups that don't disclose their donors. This trend has escalated over the last decade and a half as partisan groups realize that donating to judges can get them more influence, for less money, than bankrolling legislative campaigns. After all, the donors often end up with business before the very judges they are helping elect.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are also the judges that most citizens who interact with the system have to face. Can Americans still trust in getting their fair day in court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Court cases that make big news are usually in the federal system, where most judges are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Yet the vast majority of justice is done at the state level, where more than 100 million cases are filed annually (versus about 400,000 in federal courts). The nation's approximately 30,000 state court judges vastly outnumber their federal counterparts, and 85 percent of them will stand in at least one election during their career.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No two states pick their judges exactly the same way. Some hold partisan judicial elections, others have nonpartisan elections, and still others use merit selection—that's when legal experts select a short list of qualified candidates, the governor appoints one to the bench, and that judge later stands in a retention election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The system has its roots in the Panic of 1837, a mini-depression fueled by rampant cronyism and massive overspending by corrupt governors and legislatures. Partisan elections replaced the tradition of elected officials appointing their friends to the bench, but for decades connections and loyalty still mattered most, with party bosses determining who won. Eventually states embraced nonpartisan elections and merit selection, and for most of the 20th century, judicial elections were a little-noticed corner of American politics</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, on occasion a contentious race attracted national attention. In 1977, Rose Bird became the first woman appointed to the California Supreme Court and its first female chief justice. An avowed foe of capital punishment, she voted to vacate all 61 death penalty verdicts that came before her, prompting Republican Gov. George Deukmejian to label her a "soft-on-crime liberal." With Bird up for retention in 1986, oil and agribusiness companies, which generally saw Bird's liberal views as a threat to their interests, poured more than $5.6 million into a campaign that would unseat her. It was an early glimpse of a reliable strategy for big business: Using the soft-on-crime theme to oust judges considered unfriendly to corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Around that time, a political consultant by the name of Karl Rove was plotting his own assault on the Texas Supreme Court. Rove had helped launch the "tort wars" in response to what some Republicans saw as a court system too cozy with trial lawyers and too eager to slam corporations with hefty judgments that Rove had dubbed "junk lawsuits [7]."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Running on the slogan "Clean Slate '88," conservative candidates backed by Rove's operation won five of the six open seats on the Texas Supreme Court. Not long after, Rove teamed up with the Business Council of Alabama to engineer a similar Republican takeover in that state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Direct spending on supreme court races, 2000-14</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two years later, the US Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of an aggressive new president named Tom Donohue, picked up on Rove's strategy. Pledging to "play hardball" against "frivolous" lawsuits, the Chamber spent $10 million on judicial races in 2000 alone. It pumped $4.4 million into Ohio's Supreme Court election—the largest expenditure from a single source on a court race in US history. In the following years, the Chamber injected tens of millions into races in Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, and Wisconsin. Corporate America had grasped the potential to install friendly judges who could crack down on costly class actions and neutralize the efforts of consumer advocates. "We're clearly engaged in hand-to-hand combat," as Donohue put it, "and we've got to step it up if we're going to survive."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unions spent millions on these races as well—particularly across the Upper Midwest, as labor leaders recognized they could get a great return on investment by backing justices sympathetic to workers' rights. As an official with the Ohio AFL-CIO once said: "We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A major showdown came in 2004, in West Virginia's Supreme Court election. Don Blankenship [8], the former CEO of Massey Energy, donated $3 million to Republican candidate Brent Benjamin. Meanwhile, a nonprofit funded primarily by Massey Energy ran TV ads [9] accusing incumbent Justice Warren McGraw of getting a child rapist out of prison and into a job at a high school. After Benjamin won, the investment paid off big time: He later cast the deciding vote to overturn a lower court's $50 million verdict against Massey Energy. Two years later, the US Supreme Court ruled [10] that Benjamin should have recused himself. It overturned the decision and sent the case back to West Virginia. (Massey Energy ultimately prevailed in state court [11].)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporate interests also reaped a huge return on investment in the 2004 Supreme Court election in Illinois. Five years earlier, a jury had handed down a $1.19 billion penalty [12] to the insurance company State Farm for requiring millions of claimants to accept subpar replacement auto parts. State Farm and its employees—working through the US Chamber, the Illinois Republican Party, and an Illinois-based tort reform group—steered $4 million to elect a sympathetic judge named Lloyd Karmeier to the Supreme Court, which was considering State Farm's appeal of the auto parts verdict. Karmeier, his opponent, and various outside groups spent a record $9.3 million on the race. Karmeier, who would later acknowledge that the sum was "obscene," won easily. And the millions State Farm spent were a pittance compared with what it gained: The next year, Karmeier cast the deciding vote to overturn the more than $1 billion verdict against State Farm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Up to this point, the big spenders were mostly targeting contested judicial elections—ones in which a candidate challenged a sitting justice. Then came the Iowa Supreme Court's 2009 decision in Varnum v. Brien [13], in which the seven justices unanimously ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriage violated the state constitution. Social-conservative groups leapt into action, targeting three of the seven justices who were up for retention election—ones where voters only check "yes" or "no." The National Organization for Marriage and its allies spent nearly $1 million and defeated all three. "They wanted to make sure we were punished for our decision and that other judges witnessed that so they wouldn't do it either," former Justice Marsha Ternus told me.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The strategy of turning sleepy retention elections into political showdowns has been spreading. In Florida's 2012 retention elections, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and the Republican Party of Florida spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to unseat three sitting justices. A group called Defend Justice From Politics spent $3.1 million on the justices' behalf, helping them prevail. In Michigan in 2012, two anonymously funded nonprofits, the Judicial Crisis Network and Americans for Job Security, poured $2.1 million into attack ads against five judges on Michigan's 6th Circuit Court, though the judges won out. And earlier this year, Tennessee's lieutenant governor, Ron Ramsey, took it upon himself to spearhead an effort to unseat three sitting state Supreme Court justices—and, along with them, the attorney general, who is appointed by the court. Ramsey's PAC pumped $425,000 into a group running negative ads [14] that blasted the three justices as "liberal on crime" and for "helping advance Obamacare." Funds were also contributed by Americans for Prosperity and the GOP's State Government Leadership Foundation, which said it planned to spend an additional $5 million in 2014 on judicial races in North Carolina, Tennessee, and elsewhere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though the three Tennessee justices prevailed in the end, one of them, Connie Clark, told me she's concerned about the precedent set by the fight. "As long as there are no limits on outside money," she says, "then this will become the new normal."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The transformation of judicial campaigns has alarmed another veteran of the court system. "Judicial elections pose a serious threat," former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told Mother Jones. "If judicial decisions are in fact not fair and impartial—or even if they are perceived as being biased—the basis of support for our courts crumbles."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Initially, the 2011-12 election season—the first full cycle since Citizens United—saw a modest dip in overall reported spending on state judicial races, compared to four years earlier. But that is likely because much of the new spending does not have to be disclosed or tracked. This year, for example, Americans for Prosperity-Tennessee announced a "major new effort [15]" to educate the public about the "liberal records" of the three justices—and not a penny of that spending was reported to the state. The outside spending on judicial races that we do know about rose to a record-high $24.9 million—a nearly sevenfold increase since 2000, and now accounting for 40 percent of the total spending on these campaigns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Direct vs. outside judicial spending (in 2014 dollars)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Recent research suggests this flood of political money could be influencing judges' decisions. Emory University analyzed [16] 2,345 state supreme court decisions from all 50 states between 2010 and 2012 and concluded that the more campaign money justices received from business interests, the more likely they were to vote in favor of businesses appearing before them. (Interestingly, the study found a stronger tie between business donations and Democratic justices' decisions. Republican justices, it speculated, were already more favorably inclined toward business interests, so the campaign money didn't make as much of a difference.) Another analysis [17], by the left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, suggested that as more money was spent on soft-on-crime attack ads in campaigns, justices were increasingly siding with the prosecution</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The public may be starting to catch on: A 2013 poll [18] by Justice at Stake, a nonprofit group focused on reforming the system, found that 87 percent of Americans believe that campaign donations could influence court rulings. "You can't expect judges to act like Huey Long on the campaign trail and expect them to be Solomon in the courtroom," says Bert Brandenburg, the group's executive director.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A case pending before the US Supreme Court could inject even more politics into judicial races. In Lanell Williams-Yulee v. the Florida Bar, a county-level judge wants the nation's high court to strike down laws in 30 states blocking judges from personally asking donors for campaign cash. In those states, treasurers and fundraising consultants typically make the ask on behalf of a judicial candidate. Only nine states currently allow judges to solicit donations directly for their campaigns, but in those states, "the road to victory begins with the solicitation of money," Wallace Jefferson, the former chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, has written. "The 'ask' is undignified, and the 'give' is fairly compelled." For those fighting to insulate judges from electoral politics, the elimination of the fundraising ban would be yet another step in the wrong direction.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some researchers dispute the notion that rough-and-tumble judicial elections are a problem. One recent Michigan State University study [19] of supreme court races concluded that attack ads did not hurt incumbents in partisan elections. Other studies [20] found that nonpartisan elections are less likely to draw a challenger, are less competitive even when there is a challenger, and attract fewer voters than partisan elections do.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The debate boils down to a fundamental notion: whether the judicial branch of government is unique from the other two and should be insulated from politics. With court integrity hanging in the balance, should judges be chosen the same way we pick presidents and members of Congress</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Randy Shepard, who served as the chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court for 25 years, retired from the court in 2012 as the longest-serving state chief justice in American history. A lifelong Republican in a red state, Shepard has gone through the merit selection process and run in multiple elections. "What's at stake in these big-money elections is the promise of due process and an impartial court," he told me. "Do I as a citizen walk into that courtroom standing on a relatively level playing field?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He offered up a hypothetical from a law review article he wrote that, he proudly noted, was cited by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Kennedy in the Massey Energy case [10]—the one where the high court ruled that a judge who'd received massive campaign contributions connected to a company had to recuse himself from a case involving that company. "Say you're going before a trial judge making a decision about the custody of your grandchildren, and your evil son-in-law or daughter-in-law had made a very large contribution to the judge. How would you feel about that? You wouldn't feel very optimistic, would you?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">chamberwatch</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Generally, plaintiffs’ attorneys represent consumers and workers to help them seek compensation in court for injuries caused by alleged corporate wrongdoing. In the late 1990s, the Chamber launched a well-financed campaign to malign plaintiffs’ attorneys as part of a wider crusade to implement national and international policies that shield corporations from lawsuits.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1998, the Chamber founded the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR), now the largest sub-group within the Chamber. More than half of the $44 million the ILR raised in 2012 came from just 21 large donors, with an average donation of more than $450,000. The Chamber does its anti-consumer work through the ILR and through its Coalition to Preserve Arbitration, led by AT&T and comprising trade associations in finance, insurance, car sales and other industries where contracts are complicated and companies often have an advantage in information and expertise.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the ILR’s apparent goals is to further entrench the use of pre-dispute binding arbitration clauses in corporate contracts with consumers and employees. The clauses deny individuals’ right their day in court and require them instead to resolve disputes with corporations in private arbitration proceedings. The ILR funds research that attempts to support the claim that consumers do better in arbitration than in the courts, but more credible research shows that consumers and employeesare less successful in arbitration than in the courts. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has found that arbitration clauses are prevalent in financial services contracts and that very few consumers use arbitration to resolve financial disputes. Arbitration is an unpopular choice for consumers because it tends to create an unbalanced playing field that favors corporations.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Arbitration clauses in consumer contracts frequently forbid consumers from participating in class actions against the company. As a result, consumer disputes with companies can be arbitrated only on an individual basis, a method that is often impractical because the individual amount at stake is often small, even where the corporation’s total benefit from the challenged conduct is significant. That means consumers are increasingly unable to challenge wrongful corporate conduct. And if consumers can’t seek redress, companies do not have to answer for predatory or illegal practices.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ILR also works to place articles on “cases and actions that portend to have an impact on business” in widely read publications through its media outfit, the Legal Newsline, founded in 2006.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Further, 39 states elect their high court judges, and from 2001 to 2003, for example, the candidate backed by the Chamber won 21 of 24 judicial elections. In 2004, the Chamber-backed candidate won 12 of 13 state Supreme Court races.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Chamber gives financial support to the campaigns of state judges it views as aligned with its interests and attacks judges that it views as opposed to its priorities. Business groups spent about $26.2 million in races between 2000 and 2009, and the Chamber was a major player. In 2000, for example, the Mississippi chief justice, whom the Chamber supported but who was concerned about out-of-state influence on the state elections, asked the Chamber to stop running ads for her — but the Chamber ignored her request.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chamber-identified ads disappeared in the 2002 Mississippi election season, but similar ads were run by the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA). The LEAA’s donors are secret, but Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz suspected the Chamber was still at work, saying, “The ads that the U.S. Chamber ran against me in 2000 were extremely similar [to the ones] that the LEAA ran against me in 2008.” The Chamber had run highly negative ads, including accusing Justice Diaz of “voting for drug dealers and baby killers.”&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Judges who are running for reelection do keep in mind what the next 30-second ad is going to look like,” Justice Diaz said. A 2013 report by the Center for American Progress found that as campaign cash in judicial elections has increased, courts have begun to rule more often in favor of prosecutors and against criminal defendants.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fewer numbers are available now than when the wave of spending began around 2000. The Chamber’s state high court spending is becoming increasingly difficult to trace, as observers, including former state supreme court justices, believe it has turned increasingly to spending money through opaque third-party organizations like the LEAA. Additionally, as the Center for Public Integrity notes, “Tracking all outside spending is nearly impossible thanks to lax state disclosure rules, as well as a loophole in the federal tax code that allows politically active nonprofits to run attack ads without disclosing who funds them.”&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a 2002 speech to the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Chamber President Tom Donohue gave some insight into the rise of the Chamber's involvement in judicial elections. Taking aim at trial lawyers who successfully litigated class action lawsuits for people harmed by asbestos and tobacco companies, he said, “Our approach is simple — implement a multi-front strategy of challenging these unscrupulous trial lawyers every time they poke their head out of the ground. … On the political front, we’re going to get involved in key state Supreme Court and attorney general races as part of our effort to elect pro-legal reform judicial candidates.... We’re clearly engaged in hand-to-hand combat, and we’ve got to step it up if we’re going to survive.”&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5) EDUCATE AND TRAIN (INDOCTRINATE) LEGISLATORS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Through ALEC, SPN think tanks plan and conduct hundreds of "educational" workshops for legislators that often result in legislative push for a specific agenda. For example, Colorado's Independence Institute gave a report on "public pension reform" at ALEC's 2011 annual meeting, which was followed by renewed efforts to privatize and otherwise alter pensions being introduced in 29 states in that year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moreover, many SPN think tanks hold "legislative forums," seminars, "policy previews," "policy orientations," etc., when their state's legislature begins a new session. Whether called lobbying or not, these events present state legislators with the policy priorities and bills being pushed by the think tanks for that legislative session. Such events have been held by the Montana Policy Institute, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and Oregon's Cascade Policy Institute, the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, Louisiana's Pelican Institute for Public Policy, North Carolina's John William Pope Civitas Institute, New Jersey's Common Sense Institute, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, and the Illinois Policy Foundation, according to "SPN News."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such events advance corporate interests like privatizing American infrastructure, but are re-framed as "show[ing] lawmakers how to fund transportation infrastructure with private money." Such a framing avoids words like "convince," "persuade," and "lobby."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">judicial junket update:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/03/28/12368/corporations-pro-business-nonprofits-foot-bill-judicial-seminars</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Between July 2008 and 2012, about 185 federal judges attended more than 100 judicial education seminars, sponsored by conservative foundations and multinational corporations like ExxonMobil, Pfizer and BP.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Center identified instances where judges who attended seminars underwritten by certain firms and trade groups later issued rulings in the funders’ favor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George Mason University’s Law & Economics Center and Northwestern University’s Judicial Education Program hosted more judicial conferences than any other organization or university.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Koch Foundation and The Searle Freedom Trust, both major supporters of conservative causes, were sponsors for most of the conferences organized by the two schools.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The person who spoke at more judicial conferences than any other was Henry Butler, a professor and prominent conservative formerly of Northwestern and now executive director of George Mason’s Law & Economics Center.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bp gulf spill NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court panel has reaffirmed its ruling that BP is liable for federal Clean Water Act damages stemming from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the latest loss for the oil giant as it fights court decisions that could ultimately bring $18 billion in penalties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments that there were errors in its June 4 ruling on BP's Clean Water Act liability. The ruling released Wednesday night is not the final say from the court. BP and its minority partner in the Macondo well, Anadarko Petroleum Corp., have a request pending for the full 15-member court to reconsider the issue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The June order and Wednesday's follow-up were issued by Judges Fortunato Benavides, Carolyn Dineen King and James Dennis. They upheld U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier's ruling holding the well owners are liable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BP and Anadarko had argued they were not liable because equipment failure on the leased rig Deepwater Horizon caused the April 2010 disaster. An explosion on the rig killed 11 workers and sent millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf in what became the nation's worst offshore oil disaster.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barbier has also ruled that BP was "grossly negligent" in the disaster. BP has asked Barbier to reconsider that finding, which, if it stands, would be a factor in whether the water act penalties for the company reach an estimated $18 billion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under the Clean Water Act, a polluter can be forced to pay from $1,100 to $4,300 per barrel of spilled oil. The higher limit applies if the company is found grossly negligent — as BP was in Barbier's ruling. But penalties can be assessed at lower amounts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Government experts estimated that 4.2 million barrels spilled into the Gulf. BP has urged Barbier to use an estimate of 2.45 million barrels in calculating any Clean Water Act penalties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barbier has scheduled a trial in January to help decide how much BP owes in federal Clean Water Act penalties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BP declined comment on the latest ruling. Anadarko did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a June interview, Loyola University law professor Blaine LeCesne said he doubts Anadarko will have to pay much, if anything, in Clean Water Act fines because its partnership gave BP complete control over how the well was drilled and run.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">note not class action, presumably greg abbot not helpful?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A jury in Dallas, TX today awarded $2.925 million to plaintiffs Bob and Lisa Parr, who sued Barnett shale fracking company Aruba Petroleum Inc. for&nbsp; intentionally causing a nuisance on the Parr's property which&nbsp; impacted their health and ruined their drinking water.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The jury returned its 5-1 verdict confirming that Aruba Petroleum “intentionally created a private nuisance” though its drilling, fracking and production activities at 21 gas wells near the Parrs' Wise County home over a three-year period between 2008-2011.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Plaintiffs attorneys claimed the case is “the first fracking verdict in U.S.history.”&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New Politics of Judicial Elections, 2011-12: How New Waves of Special Interest Spending Raised the Stakes for Fair Courts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This collaborative report analyzes the prominent role of special interest money in state supreme court elections. In 2011-12, many of these races “seemed alarmingly indistinguishable from ordinary political campaigns—featuring everything from Super PACs and mudslinging attack ads to millions of dollars of candidate fundraising and independent spending.” http://www.followthemoney.org/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://newpoliticsreport.org/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">older?&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justice at Risk: An Empirical Analysis of Campaign Contributions and Judicial Decisions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justice at Risk is an empirical research project exploring the relationship between campaign contributions to candidates in state supreme court elections and the votes justices cast in cases while on the court. It concludes that there is a significant relationship between business group contributions to state supreme court justices and the voting of those justices in cases involving business matters. The study, sponsored by the American Constitution Society and designed by experienced independent empirical researchers, utilizes data from the Institute</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The methodology used in the report is available here</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The codebook with the ACS data is available here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The datasets are available here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">corkery</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other recipients, such as American Action Network, Americans for Job Security (AJS) and Americans for Prosperity, are notably active in the political ad wars. AJS, for example, which received a combined total of nearly $3 million from Wellspring in 2008 and 2010, spent at least $8.3 million on ads mentioning federal candidates in 2010, and nearly $16 million in 2012. AJS was also involved in a scheme last year that funneled $11 million into efforts to curb the political power of labor unions and prevent a tax increase. California’s campaign finance agency called it political "money laundering" and last month levied $1 million in fines in the case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And still other Wellspring recipients train their sights on the judicial branch. The Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) -- originally called Judicial Confirmation Network -- was started in 2004 to help build support for former President George W. Bush's federal court nominees. Now it works against Obama's judicial picks -- and Obama himself. According to Federal Election Commission records,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;JCN spent $571,000 in 2008 opposing Obama's election. JCN also runs ads benefiting conservative state court candidates. According to the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, the group spent more than $1 million airing ads against a Democratic state supreme court candidate in Michigan last year; its target, Bridget Mary McCormack, won despite that. It also spent $1 million on a lower court race – believed to be the first time dark money has been used in a trial court contest.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As it happens, Neil Corkery is treasurer of JCN. Wellspring, run by his wife, gave the group and its affiliate, the Judicial Education Project, a total of more than $700,000 over a two-year period encompassing 2010 and 2011.&nbsp; ...?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2010 Wellspring gave $125,000 each to the Michigan-based American Justice Partnership (AJP) and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which shares AJP's goal of putting more conservatives on the bench.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That year, AJP gave more than $1 million to the Michigan Republican Party. And the Michigan Chamber gave $5.4 million to the Republican Governors Association -- about the same amount that the RGA subsequently routed to the Michigan GOP. The state GOP spent about $4.8 million on in Michigan's supreme court race that year, according to the independent Michigan Campaign Finance Network, which did a detailed review of public records.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Got that? Not if the groups involved can help it. The upshot, though, is that two of Wellspring's recipients invested in the contest -- which ultimately restored a conservative majority to the highest court in the state.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, over the course of three years, Wellspring has given nearly $1 million to Missourians for Better Courts. That group has fought to change Missouri's judicial selection process, which it argues is overly influenced by liberal trial lawyers.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Putting, or keeping, conservatives on the nation’s courts was the focus of several other Wellspring grantees, including the Alabama Civil Justice Reform Committee, Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Illinois Manufacturers Association.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cash in, cash out</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the other side of the ledger sheet, though, the sources of Wellspring's millions are mostly a cipher. Like all 501(c)(4) organizations, it doesn't have to reveal them. CRP and NPR have been able to learn of only three donors, all of which are also (c)(4)s: The American Democracy Alliance gave Wellspring $150,000 in 2008, the year the Corkery group launched. A second, Founding Principles PAC gave it $1,026, also in 2008. And Rosebush Corp. gave Wellspring $100,000 in 2011.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That's a little more than $251,000 -- roughly 1 percent of the $24 million Wellspring has reported as income from 2008 through 2011. None of the three donor groups returned calls from NPR and CRP seeking comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American Democracy Alliance, like Wellspring, has taken an interest in judicial elections: In 2010, it gave $100,000 to ShowMe Better Courts, a Missouri group; and $500,000 to the Adam Smith Foundation -- which, in turn sent money to Missourians for Better Courts, the same group that received nearly $1 million from Wellspring.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rosebush Corp., headed by a Pennsylvanian named Brian Sullivan, also gave $750,000 in 2011 to Americans for Limited Government, a group headed by wealthy libertarian Howard Rich that has spent millions running ads against Democrats and giving to other conservative organizations. The next year, Rosebush gave to Club for Growth Action, which has helped fuel the rise of some tea party Republicans, and to the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/11/wellsprings-flow.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">funded the Davis hit:&nbsp; Though the ATA resisted Gray Davis' lawsuit to avoid disclosing its funders in 2001, the group revealed its major 2002 contributors' names (most likely mistakenly) in the 2002 tax form it provided Public Citizen. Its top contributor that year was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which gave $2.6 million. The ATA received about $2.3 million of that donation in the month before Election Day.11 The Chamber reportedly employed a strategy of funding outside groups to influence judicial elections in 2002, making its role more discrete than in 2000 when it broadcast ads under its own name.12</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Taxpayers Alliance 990 form, 2002.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Robert Lenzner and Matthew Miller, "Buying Justice; For Years Trial Lawyers Owned State Courts. Now Big Business Is Striking Back," Forbes, July 21, 2003.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">legal.txt&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MACRO:&nbsp; big green shifted from grassroots to the courts EDF etc and won major victories&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">stuffed spotted owl story?) AND what's the point of having a Clean Air Act if it's not enforced?&nbsp; Similarly, historic anti-tobacco suit forced companies to admit they kill ppl, forced them to pay damages, and forced them to turn over the proof (those databases are still useful in outing BS ppl and tactics.&nbsp; Do we need same for fossil fuels?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, CRM used the courts to get social and economic justice (Brown v Bd of Ed) thus Powell says we need FedSoc to balance ACLU (plus corps have massive legal capability to defend and attack eg SLAPP; however, legal firm branches out into lobbying, also buffer (Hunt & Wms hires the intel co to spy on activists).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Note also that tort and class action lawsuits are leverage where small groups and individuals can get justice from large rich corp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omg: "By using stealth tactics to pursue a corporate agenda, the Bush administration is undermining the very landscape of democracy. The White House has also been darkly brilliant at using the courts to do its dirty work -- through methods such as "sweetheart suits," the practice of encouraging states and private groups to file lawsuits against the federal government, and then agreeing to negotiated settlements that bypass environmental laws without any interference from Congress or the public. [10]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RICO countered by voodoo TP:&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Citizens for a Sound Economy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CSE, one of the third-party ‘anti-tax’ tobacco industry partners, was a think tank dedicated to free market economics. CSE (which split into AFP and FreedomWorks in 2004) was co-founded in 1984 by David Koch, of Koch Industries, and Richard Fink, former professor of economics at George Mason University, who has worked for Koch Industries since 1990.3 ,51 CSE supported the agendas of the tobacco and other industries, including oil, chemical, pharmaceutical and telecommunications, and was funded by them.52 In 2002, before Tea Party politics were widely discussed in the mainstream media, CSE started its US Tea Party (http://www.usteaparty.com) project, the website of which stated ‘our US Tea Party is a national event, hosted continuously online and open to all Americans who feel our taxes are too high and the tax code is too complicated.’53 Between 1991 and 2002 the tobacco companies, mainly Philip Morris, provided CSE with at least US$5.3 million (see online supplementary table S3). Philip Morris gave CSE US$250 000 annually in the early 1990s to start six state chapters.41</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Philip Morris (PM) designated CSE a ‘Category A’ public policy organisation for funding.54 ‘Category A’ organisations were ‘the largest and most important/sustained relationships’ that were assigned a ‘PM senior relationship manager’ to put them at the ‘centre of a network of information-sharing among PM people involved with the organisation’ and ‘[assure] systematic and ongoing relationship activities’.54 In response to an internal 1999 email asking whether CSE was worth its current level of funding, Philip Morris’ vice president of federal government affairs replied: They are adding this level of value. They have provided significant grassroots assistance, in the nature of several thousand calls to the Hill on the lawsuit [likely the federal RICO lawsuit against the major cigarette companies discussed below] direct lobbying on the lawsuit, some media as well as continuing a very useful level of activity on FET [federal excise tax]/prescription drugs [a proposal to expand Medicare and fund prescription drugs with a tobacco tax]. Throughout the August [Congressional] Recess they have been very active on our behalf in the field in key states with key Members.55</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vol. 18 No. 7 (July, 2008) pp.632-636</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE RISE OF THE CONSERVATIVE LEGAL MOVEMENT: THE BATTLE FOR CONTROL OF THE LAW, by Steven M. Teles.&nbsp; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. 385pp.&nbsp; Cloth. $35.00/£19.95.&nbsp; ISBN: 9780691122083.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reviewed by Roy B. Flemming, Department of Political Science, Texas A&M University.&nbsp; Email: roy [at] politics.tamu.edu.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sure, it was a coincidence but the timing could not have been better.&nbsp; The morning before I sat down to write this review, I received a solicitation letter from the Federalist Society asking me for a donation.&nbsp; The letter signed by Eugene B. Meyer, the organization’s president, pointedly quoted Steven Teles’ comment from his book that the “Federalist Society represents, without a doubt, the most vigorous, durable, and well-ordered organization to emerge from . . . modern conservatism’s political strategy.”&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Teles set out to document the stumbles, turning points, and successes of the conservative counter-mobilization against legal liberalism, his “first real breakthrough” came after Meyer let him loose to rummage through the Society’s internal documents. Other entrepreneurs in the conservative legal movement like Henry Manne, William “Chip” Mellor, and Clint Bolick fully cooperated with Teles, answering his questions and providing him with background documents.&nbsp; Equally important, pivotal financial patrons of the movement, like the Olin Foundation, followed suit.&nbsp; Finally, Teles decided to organize his research around the themes of strategy and entrepreneurship which he credits to conversations with Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation. No published study about the conservative legal movement of which I am aware can compete with the information, detail, perspectives, and stories that Teles has packed into his book.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Teles’ major stories pivot around the formation and evolution of the Federalist Society, the emergence and institutionalization of law and economics as part of law school curriculums, the Center for Individual Rights, and the Institute for Justice.&nbsp; Nested within these narratives are vignettes of other players and organizations that illustrate how patrons and entrepreneurs learned from their mistakes and redirected their strategies.&nbsp; Teles quickly alerts his readers that he not concerned with organizations like the American Center for Law and Justice that have been involved in religious or social conservative litigation.&nbsp; Nor is he interested in the thicket of conservative think tanks that sprouted up during the past three decades or in the proliferation of litigating groups with traditional pro-business agendas or interests in tort reform.&nbsp; The price of Teles’ tight focus, however, is easily off-set by the many benefits generated by his in-depth discussions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The idea for a conservative legal counter-mobilization first surfaced in Lewis Powell’s&nbsp; confidential memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce in 1971 shortly before Nixon nominated him to the Supreme Court.&nbsp; (Powell’s memo can be found at [633] www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/personality/print/sources_document13.html).&nbsp; Entitled “Attack of [sic] the American Free Enterprise System,” Powell argued America’s economic system was under “broad attack.”&nbsp; The “most disquieting” attacks were not those made by the usual left-wing or socialist suspects but those from “the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians.”&nbsp; Powell urged the Chamber to confront the criticism especially in universities and colleges (including a “balancing of faculties”) and redirect the public agenda by creating incentives for “independent scholars who believe in the system” to publish more often and more widely.&nbsp; In a very real sense, Powell’s ideas foreshadowed Manne’s campaign to create law and economics centers in law schools and the Olin Foundation’s initiatives aimed at the elite schools as well as the network of conservative faculty and students created by the Federalist Society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a section called a “Neglected Opportunity in the Courts,” Powell cautioned that liberal and far left groups had been “far more astute” in recognizing the “judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, and political change.”&nbsp; This could be a “vast area of opportunity” for the Chamber and the soon-to-be associate justice recommended that it hire “highly competent” staff attorneys to file amicus briefs in the Supreme Court or under special circumstances retain “lawyers of national standing and reputation” to participate in Chamber-sponsored law suits.&nbsp; The American Civil Liberties Union, civil rights groups, and liberal public interest law outfits like those created by Ralph Nader, offered off-the-shelf templates that conservatives could use to organize their counter-mobilization.&nbsp; As Teles explains, Powell implied that the fundamental problem was an imbalance in the interests appearing in courtrooms and that it could be righted by recruiting pro-business if not conservative “repeat players” and by a revival of “judicial restraint” on the bench.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Things did not play out as simply as Powell intimated.&nbsp; Following the formation of the Pacific Legal Foundation in 1973 with the support from the California Chamber of Commerce, several other regional foundations were soon created under the auspices of the National Legal Center for the Public Interest (NLCPI).&nbsp; This network was organized geographically, not functionally, and held together by interlocking directorships.&nbsp; The result was “organizational turmoil” because as one insider told Teles “NLCPI had all the structural flaws of the Articles of Confederation” (p.63).&nbsp; Equally telling, the emphasis on filing amicus briefs displaced coherent litigation strategies and put the foundations on fund-raising treadmills.&nbsp; Most damning of all for Powell’s business-led strategy were unexpected tensions between business interests and conservative ideology.&nbsp; As Adam Smith cautioned long ago, business interests are not synonymous with the public interest however it is defined.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Teles’ cameo study of the Mountain States Legal Foundation illustrates the point.&nbsp; With reliable funding from Joseph Coors, a long-time patron of right-wing causes, effective leadership in the early years by James Watts who later became President Reagan’s Interior [634] Secretary, and a shared sense of grievance arising from the “Sagebrush Rebellion” in the Western states over the control of federal lands, the Mountain States Legal Foundation had several built-in advantages.&nbsp; Nevertheless it faltered because its business allies expected returns on their “investments” and the foundation often filed amicus briefs in response to particular contributions or to encourage new ones.&nbsp; Matters came to a head when the foundation challenged on First Amendment grounds Denver’s grant of an exclusive cable television franchise to a local businessman, a grant widely supported by the Mile High City’s business community.&nbsp; As an insider explained to Teles, the foundation’s suit “gored very powerful interests there, well connected to the Republican Party . . . Joe Coors resigned from our board [saying] . . . ’I founded MSLF . . . to take on the Sierra Club, not to do this sort of thing’” (p.65).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Soul-searching about the strategy behind the first generation of public interest firms began in the late 1970s when Michael Horowitz (subsequently chief counsel of the Office of Management and Budget during the first Reagan administration) submitted a highly critical report to the Scaife Foundation.&nbsp; The Horowitz Report redefined the goals of the legal counter-mobilization.&nbsp; Litigation alone could not dislodge legal liberalism.&nbsp; Ties to business interests tethered conservative public interest firms and held them back from taking the moral high ground. Amicus briefs were “pufferies intended for naïve audiences of donors and not truly doing meaningful work” (p.71).&nbsp; The aversion to basing organizations in Washington, D.C. had to be jettisoned in order to confront liberalism on its own turf.&nbsp; Most important of all, the movement needed to redefine itself along clear, consistent libertarian lines with long-term strategies that would appeal to underdogs caught up in unresponsive legal institutions like black beauticians struggling under state regulations or lower middle class whites whose houses were threatened by eminent domain.&nbsp; Conservatives had to become idealistic “good guys” limiting government and empowering civil society.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Horowitz Report doused cold water on patron enthusiasm for funding conservative public interest law firms but in time the foundations used the report to restructure how these firms operated&nbsp; Two of these second generation firms are the subject of a separate chapter in which Teles compares the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), best known for its battles against affirmative action policies at the University of Texas and University of Michigan, and the Institute for Justice (IJ) whose fame soared after it turned defeat in KELO v. CITY OF NEW LONDON into a public policy success.&nbsp; While the two firms differ significantly in many ways, they share important similarities.&nbsp; For one thing, judicial activism no longer is a dirty word.&nbsp; Instead both firms see judicial activism as a means of reviving old rights to protect the conservative goal of limited government; property rights and eminent domain offer just one example.&nbsp; Clint Bolick (2007), co-founder of the Institute for Justice, recently argued in favor of judicial activism in a new book published by the libertarian Cato Institute.&nbsp; The firms, seeing the value in an activist bench, are accordingly more strategic in the cases they select and [635] keep a steady eye on whether a case has the potential to change the public policy agenda or the law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Horowitz, like Powell, stressed that a “key site” to contest legal liberalism was the university.&nbsp; In three chapters, Teles traces the winding, upward path of the law and economics movement and the seemingly inexorable growth of the Federalist Society.&nbsp; The law and economics story has two parts.&nbsp; The first deals with constructing the “mother ship” at the University of Chicago and the travails of Henry Manne to build law and economic centers at other universities and his final success at George Mason University.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chicago legitimized law and economics.&nbsp; The JOURNAL OF LAW AND ECONOMICS, the sub-field’s first journal, started there and was later edited by Ronald Coase who won a Nobel Prize for his work.&nbsp; Chicago’s highly influential Anti-Trust Project provided fellowships supported by the Volker Fund, attracted law professors like Robert Bork, and revolutionized the field.&nbsp; Richard Posner with impeccable establishment credentials (Harvard Law and former Supreme Court clerk for Justice William Brennan) wrote ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW (published in 1973 and now in its seventh edition) in which he challenged myriad shibboleths in traditional legal research.&nbsp; In the meantime, Manne spread the gospel by pushing for new centers at other universities, aggressively marketed law and economics with help from the Liberty Fund by holding regular conferences that identified ambitious scholars and brought them into the conservative fold, and through the Economics Institute for Federal Judges introduced numerous judges to the fundamentals of micro-economics.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The second part of the story focuses on the Olin Foundation’s strategic deployment of its largesse aimed directly at faculty and students in elite law schools (most of Manne’s centers were at lesser-ranked schools) which solidified the stature of the law and economics sub-field and raised its status as a distinctive alternative to traditional and contemporary legal scholarship.&nbsp; Law and economics was not Olin’s first choice, however.&nbsp; As an official explained to Teles: “I would have preferred to do something in constitutional law but . . . [i]f you said to a dean that you wanted to fund conservative constitutional law, he would reject the idea out of hand . . . Law and economics is neutral, but it has a philosophical thrust in the direction of free markets and limited government.&nbsp; That is, like many disciplines, it seems neutral but it isn’t in fact” (p.189).&nbsp; Olin’s gamble on law and economics paid off handsomely in ways that Lewis Powell would have applauded.&nbsp; At Harvard, Olin’s support for law and economics provided money, academic panache, and camouflage for Harvard’s president who wanted to stymie the critical legal studies movement and mollify angry alumni in corporate law firms upset by the havoc they felt the “crits” were creating within the profession.&nbsp; Law and economics raised the research bar for hiring and tenure decisions and offered alternatives to law schools that altered the balance of power in their faculties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Federalist Society rang repeated alarms within the legal profession that Harvard Law was “out of control” and [636] from its beginning the Society has been concerned generally about the placement of conservatives in law schools and out of them.&nbsp; Teles maintains in his chapter on the Society, however, that over the course of its twenty-five year history the Federalist Society has carved out an influential niche for itself by limiting its attention to creating and fostering complex networks of lawyers, faculty, law students, and foundation patrons that are held together by an emphasis on serious debate and discourse over ideas that challenge legal liberalism while avoiding right-wing factionalism.&nbsp; Eschewing the establishment of an in-house litigation center early on, the Society also decided not turn itself into a conservative clone of the American Bar Association despite earlier feelings that perhaps it should and despite its persistent criticisms of the ABA.&nbsp; These strategic choices (there were others at critical moments) were made by a stable, self-perpetuating cadre of long-serving leaders, including Eugene Meyer, who were present at the Society’s founding and are aligned with foundation executives and senior figures from the legal community.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Teles neither constructs a theory of the rise of the conservative legal movement nor tests one.&nbsp; Conceptual references are employed at various times but largely to locate the study within the existing literature.&nbsp; This by no means diminishes Teles’ accomplishment.&nbsp; Each of his multiple interlocking stories of the pas de trois between different conservative entrepreneurs, their patrons and financiers, and the institutions they either created or tried to change took place over several years and demanded clear precise detailing, which they duly received.&nbsp; Teles’ book is an important reference and the chief departure point for anybody seriously wanting to understand one of the most important transformations in contemporary legal history and politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">REFERENCES:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bolick, Clint. 2007. DAVID’S HAMMER: THE CASE FOR AN ACTIVIST JUDICIARY. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Posner, Richard. 1973. ECONOMICS OF LAW.&nbsp; Boston: Little Brown and Company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CASE REFERENCE:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">KELO v. CITY OF NEW LONDON, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">*</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roy B. Flemming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Can a Judge Really Block the SEC’s Settlement With Steven Cohen?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judge Victor Marrero last week became the latest federal judge to question a time-honored tactic of federal regulators: negotiating settlements in which companies pay millions of dollars in penalties without admitting or denying that they've actually done anything wrong.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the case before Marrero, SAC Capital Advisors, a hedge fund run by the billionaire investor Steven A. Cohen, had agreed to settle insider-trading allegations by writing the Securities and Exchange Commission a check for $602 million. As usual, the deal included the "neither admit nor deny" language that has become standard for settlements with the SEC and other federal regulators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marrero found that odd. "There is something counterintuitive and incongruous about settling for $600 million if it truly did nothing wrong," he said at a Federal District Court hearing last week in Manhattan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judges have been increasingly willing to question the "neither admit nor deny" deals since Judge Jed S. Rakoff refused to approve a $285 million settlement in 2011 between the SEC and Citigroup over allegations of mortgage fraud.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In December 2011, Judge Rudolph T. Randa, a federal judge in Wisconsin, questioned an SEC settlement with the Koss Corporation, the Milwaukee-based headphone manufacturer, in which the company didn't admit or deny wrongdoing (though he ultimately approved the settlement.) Two months later, Judge Renee Marie Bumb blocked an $11.5 million settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and a New Jersey marketing company that also used "neither admit nor deny" language.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"They've asked more questions, they've taken more time," Thomas O. Gorman, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney who specializes in securities law, told ProPublica.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it's far from certain whether judges actually have the power to block such settlements.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.propublica.org/article/can-a-judge-really-block-the-s.e.c.s-settlement-with-steve-cohen</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brand name riggers of the justice system</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cowboy hat By Jim Hightower - Mon., 3/4/13</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amazon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dell</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Starbucks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Verizon Wireless</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AT&T</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">eBay</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Time Warner</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wells Fargo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Citibank</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Microsoft</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The list of corporations that underhandedly bar your access to the courts ranges across every business sector. Buying a home? If you choose one from Centex, DR Horton ("America's Builder"), KB, Pulte, or Ryland-it'll come with forced arbitration built into it. Maybe you or a loved one needs a nursing home. That can be an unhappy experience, but if you have a complaint, you'll find that such national chains as Carrington Place, Covenant, and Kindred shove you into the dark hallways of corporate justice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Take out a student loan from Discover, invest through Charles Schwab or T. Rowe Price, purchase a television from Sony, or a game console from Xbox LIVE, get involved in some e-commerce on eBay or PayPal, get a Starbucks gift card, buy a membership at Gold's Gym, go for entertainment through Ticketmaster or Netflix, or call Orkin for pest control--every one of those transactions comes with a fine-print proviso that waives your Seventh Amendment rights.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The same goes for the contract you'll have to sign if you take a job with nearly any national corporation. From Hooters to Neiman Marcus, Papa John's to Yahoo!, Hobby Lobby to Nordstrom, Manpower to Macy's, the employment agreement that they tell you is just a perfunctory part of putting you on the payroll has the binding arbitration "gotcha" in it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet another thrust of the corporate political agenda was the fostering</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of a sympathetic climate for corporate anti-regulatory ideology</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">among the federal judiciary. To this end, several pro-corporate foundations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">developed ??judicial education” seminars, which involved free trips</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">for federal judges to attend training sessions at resorts such as Marco</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Island, Florida. Here corporate perspectives on environmental regulations,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">anti-trust law, and other topics were presented along with golf,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fishing, and other recreations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;The organization that pioneered the judge</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">junkets, the Law and Economics Center, was founded in 1974 and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">funded by a number of corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Abbott</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Laboratories, and Proctor and Gamble, as well as right-wing foun.. 173</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dations such as the Carthage Foundation and the Olin Foundation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LEC’s program included such seminars as “Misconceptions About Environmental</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pollution and Cancer.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Later, additional conservative</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">groups joined the judicial education movement, including the Foundation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) and the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Liberty Fund. Topics at a typical seminar sponsored by FREE at the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Elkhorn Ranch in Big Sky, Montana, included “The Environment.a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CEO’s Perspective,” taught by retired Texaco CEO Alfred DeCrane,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Progressive Myths and the Lords of Yesteryear,” and “Why We Should</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Run Public Lands Like Businesses.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to LEC’s newsletter, many judges reported that the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">seminars had “totally altered their frame of reference for cases involving</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">economic issues.” One such judge was Spencer Williams, who attended</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a Law and Economics seminar at the Key Biscayne Hotel in Miami</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">while presiding over a predatory pricing case being heard in U.S. district</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">court. Returning from the seminar, the judge overturned a jury’s</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">decision that would have awarded $15 million to the plaintiff. In a letter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to the LEC, Williams wrote, “As a result of my better understanding of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the concept of marginal costs, I have recently set aside a $15 million</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">anti-trust verdict.” gangs of am</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/o/priscilla_r_owen/index.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She chose opinions overturning rulings in favor of a child born with birth defects, a worker injured on an oil rig, a nurse fired for blowing the whistle on a drug-dealing co-worker, a family with an interest in an oil field that had been drained by a nearby company, asbestos and breast-implant plaintiffs and a student whose school made him cut his hair....Ms. Owen represented mostly oil and gas companies. She quickly gained a reputation as a formidable litigator, and the Texas firm of Andrews & Kurth made her a partner by the time she was 30.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sentelle ~ ESA b/c stops us from building hosp?! or from driving to them if bug on windshield was ES 192</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fed judge ~ earth day in school b/c religion 192&nbsp; strat ignor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/magazine/17CONSTITUTION.html?pagewanted=print&position</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">big picture hist</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">-----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NEWS: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/issue/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another way the wealthiest Americans have rigged the rules so more of the national income flows upward may be just as consequential, but less well understood. A 30-year campaign to push America's courts sharply to the right has borne abundant fruit for those in the top 1 percent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We see it reflected in today's Supreme Court, which, having unleashed a flood of super-PAC cash into our political campaigns in a decision that was one of the most brazen examples of judicial activism in the court's history, now stands poised to overturn not only the Democrats' healthcare bill, but much of the jurisprudence that supported the welfare state developed since the New Deal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A study by the Constitutional Accountability Center found that the Chamber of Commerce had won 65 percent of its cases heard by the court under Chief Justice John Roberts, compared to 56 percent under former Chief Justice William Rehnquist (1986-2005) and just 43 percent of the cases that came during the Burger court (1969-1986).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">??</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that's only the beginning. “The Roberts Court,” wrote Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, is “slowly but surely... giving corporate America a handbook on how to engage in misconduct. In case after case, it seems big companies are being given the playbook on how to win even bigger the next time.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many of the court's rulings have overturned long-standing precedents. While conservatives constantly rail against judges "legislating from the bench," it is far more common for right-leaning jurists to engage in “judicial activism” than those of a liberal bent. That's what several studies have concluded. Media Matters offered a run-down of a couple of prominent ones:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A 2005 study by Yale University law professor Paul Gewirtz and Yale Law School graduate Chad Golder showed that among Supreme Court justices at that time, those most frequently labeled "conservative" were among the most frequent practitioners of at least one brand of judicial activism -- the tendency to strike down statutes passed by Congress. Those most frequently labeled "liberal" were the least likely to strike down statutes passed by Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A 2007 study published by University of Chicago law professor Thomas J. Miles and Cass R. Sunstein... used a different measurement of judicial activism: the tendency of judges to strike down decisions by federal regulatory agencies. Sunstein and Miles found that by this definition, the Supreme Court's "conservative" justices were the most likely to engage in "judicial activism" while the "liberal" justices were most likely to exercise "judicial restraint."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a recent opinion, two federal appeals court judges suggested that all efforts to protect workers, consumers or the environment were unconstitutional, including regulatory efforts by the states. It's a radical view, but one that has gotten increasing traction in conservative legal circles. It is also the culmination of years of institutional investments by the corporate Right to advance what's come to be known as the “law and economics??? movement, which analyzes legal rulings “costs” – essentially applying neoliberal economic logic to the field. Its advocates eschew the notion that human rights or economic fairness are inherently valuable factors for the law to consider.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The model has gained increasing influence in American courts, and that's no accident. In his book, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law, Johns Hopkins scholar Steven Teles writes that conservatives, reacting to what they viewed as liberal hegemony in the legal community of the 1960s, fought hard to shift the legal terrain rightward.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spurred by their overlapping grievances, informed by an increasingly sophisticated of how to produce legal change, and coordinated by strategically shrewd group of patrons, conservatives began investing in a broad range activities designed to reverse their ?? organizational weaknesses. While similar kinds of organizational development were happening in other domains … in no other area was the process of strategic investment as prolonged, ambitious, complicated and successful as in the law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1998, the Washington Post reported that “Federal judges are attending expenses-paid, five-day seminars on property rights and the environment at resorts in Montana, sessions underwritten by conservative foundations that are also funding a wave of litigation on those issues in the federal courts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Funding for the seminars, run by a group called the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), also comes from foundations run by companies with a significant interest in property rights and environmental law issues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the group's funders was the John M. Olin Foundation, which invested millions of dollars in the law and economic movement – endowing university chairs, funding think-tanks and providing early support for the Federalist Society, which was founded in 1982 by former attorney general Ed Meese, controversial Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and Ted Olsen—who years later would win the infamous Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court in 2000 and then go on to serve as Bush’s solicitor general. The foundation said in a 2003 report to its trustees, “All in all, the Federalist Society has been one of the best investments the foundation ever made.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2005, the Olin Foundation actually declared “mission accomplished” and closed up shop. The New York Times reported that after “three decades financing the intellectual rise of the right,” the foundation’s services were no longer needed. The Times added that the loss of Olin wasn’t terribly troubling for the movement, because whereas “a generation ago just three or four major foundations operated on the Right, today’s conservatism has no shortage of institutions, donors or brio.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the economics and law movement were to become the standard in our legal culture, it would represent a massive upward redistribution of wealth. Not only would “transfer payments” – unemployment benefits, assistance for needy families and the like – be deemed unconstitutional, but so would minimum wages, job training programs, subsidized student loans and most of our already threadbare social safety net. And that environment will have been purchased for a princely sum by those who have profited so handsomely from America's spiraling income inequality.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy: And Everything else the Right Doesn't Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://movetoamend.org/how-corporate-elite-hijacked-americas-courts-enrich-top-1-percent</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://old.mediatransparency.org/storyprinterfriendly.php?storyID=21</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In her recent book Slanting the Story, journalist-critic Trudy Lieberman cites the Powell manifesto's call for a focal attack on Ralph Nader. She suggests that as a result of such concerted assaults, the right wing is "well on its way" to victory in the "broad philosophical argument" between liberals and conservatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its 1993 paper Justice for Sale, the Alliance for Justice detailed how Powell's legal recommendations inspired "a multi-faceted, comprehensive, and integrated campaign" coordinated and funded by large corporations and rightwing foundations "to create taxpayer subsidized law firms...to rewrite American jurisprudence...advanc[e] their agenda before judges, lawyers, legal scholars, and government policy makers...[and] sought to assure control over the future direction of the law" by installing ideologically friendly faculty in law schools, as well as organizing and rewarding students with scholarships and clerkships under conservative judges, and placing those judges on the bench.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Alliance document reported that the California Chamber of Commerce picked up on Powell and proposed what became in 1973 the Pacific Legal Foundation, the first of eight regional litigation centers. The seed money for establishing these centers was provided that year by J. Simon Fluor, founder of the global engineering company that bears his name. The Olin, Scaife, Bradley, Smith Richardson, and Coors' Castle Rock foundations, and others, continue to underwrite these operations. They have wrought great changes in the law - such as weakening affirmative action, and curbing access to courtrooms by death-row prisoners, the handicapped, minorities, and the elderly - to appeal, to sue, to vote. Cases argued up the judicial ladder by radical litigators have often reached the Supreme Court. They tried unsuccessfully to roll back the Miranda rights of prisoners placed under arrest, and to limit the right of states to enforce certain environmental protections. But they have won decisions in Federal courtrooms that endanger public school systems, the rights of women, the separation of church and state, and clean air and water regulations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Federalist Society is the legal think tank for these conservative litigators. It has promulgated theories that have been applied by litigators to weaken the powers of the federal government, reverse legal precedents encoded by the Warren court, and to propound counter-Constitutional principles on states' rights and property rights whose roots can be traced back to the Confederacy. The Federalists are particularly effective on campus, with active student chapters in most American law schools.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=-</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2004/Judge-Ginsburg-Industry23mar04.htm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sentelle, kirkland & Ellis, Baden, douglas ginsberg FREE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PR BS left list eh LWV,&nbsp; http://www.americanjusticepartnership.org/pdf/Justice_Hijacked_Report.pdf&nbsp; apparently upset by merit vs voter selction of judges. Soros funded? Justice at Stake</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justice at Stake is a nonpartisan campaign with more than 50 national partners, working to keep state and federal courts fair and impartial. Justice at Stake Campaign partners educate the public and work for reforms to keep politics and special interests out of the courtroom—and to protect what Chief Justice Rehnquist called one of the "crown jewels" of our democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JAS is currently funded by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Joyce Foundation, the Herbert Block Foundation, the Moriah Fund and the Open Society Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.justiceatstake.org/about/index.cfm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">koch http://www.communityrights.org/TaintedJustice/KochReport.pdf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 mil one year to fed soc</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">59 mil over 18 year to university judicial education?&nbsp; law and econoics ctr at gmu, loec kansas univ modelled on gmu and FREE since 1987&nbsp; Douglas Ginsberg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">-----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These organizations influence not only public opinion and policy but also judicial outlook. For example, in 1999 CSE subsidized the creation of amici briefs providing reasons to proclaim the Clear Air Act unconstitutional. CSE received $600,000 from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation that year.175 The foundation also provided substantial funding to the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), which holds seminars for federal judges at its ranch near Big Sky, Montana. Many influential judges attend these seminars, including those who heard arguments made by legal representatives receiving funding from CSE. It makes sense that the Kochs would fund such anti-environment organizations, given their seedy past of environmental violations and lawsuits. Most significantly, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Koch Industries with 97 counts of defying federal hazardous waste and clean air-acts when it knowingly emitted benzene fumes and then lied about its actions when questioned. In 2001, Koch Industries agreed to a $20 million settlement, a drastically smaller sum than it would have paid if convicted.176</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other significant grantees in the domain of research and advocacy include the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Reason Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. David Koch serves on the board of directors of the Reason Foundation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The foundations also provide substantial funding to the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI), whose mission is "to champion freedom, opportunity and personal responsibility for all individuals by advancing free-market policy solutions."177 The organization espouses entrepreneurship, privatization and individual liberty, three of the Koch brothers' main areas of interest. PRI publishes articles and papers, sponsors events, testifies before policymakers and provides commentary for a variety of media sources, reaching more than 141 million people in 2001 through these means. The organization supports transferring power from the government to private organizations and individuals, especially in terms of education, the environment and health care. It believes that government taxes and regulations "stifle" the nation's "entrepreneurial spirit" and lead to problems in each of these domains. Thus, the organization promotes vouchers, increased standards and accountability, and "teacher quality" in education; free-market competition in health care; and the elimination of federal social welfare programs, claiming that they result in reliance on the state and undue control of the government over individual lives. The organization gives an annual privatization award to individuals and private organizations that provide important community services, such as charter schools and sources of private scholarships.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to funding think tanks and advocacy institutes, the Koch foundations also provide substantial sums to academic institutes and universities to further conservative ideology and recruit youth to the crusade. Their main grantee is George Mason University (GMU). The three Koch foundations contributed $23,030,497 between 1985 and 2002 to the university, its foundation and its Institute for Human Studies.178 Richard Fink, the president of the Charles G. Koch Foundation, serves on the Board of Directors of GMU, where he taught until 1984. After serving as president and chief executive officer of CSE for several years, he returned to GMU, where he serves on the board of trustees of the Center for the Study of Public Choice and the Center for Market Processes and as a member of the board of the Progressive Policy Institute.179</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charles is chairman of GMU's Institute for Humane Studies, which hosts the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program. The mission of the center is "to support the achievement of a free society by discovering and facilitating the development of talented, productive students, scholars and other intellectuals who share a commitment to liberty and who demonstrate the potential to change significantly the current climate of opinion to one more congenial to the principles and practices of freedom."180 The institute sponsors free summer seminars for students interested in learning about "free market economics and networking."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The two most significant contributions to the university came in the form of a $3 million grant in 1997, which helped to launch the Mercatus Center, and a $10 million grant in 1998, which helped to create the James M.Buchanan Center for the Study of Political Economy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charles Koch is a board member at the Mercatus Center, which describes itself as a "research and education center [that] generates knowledge and understanding of how institutions affect the freedom to prosper and holds organizations accountable for their impact on that freedom."181 The center promotes free markets and "Western" values and customs. The director of its regulatory studies program, Wendy Lee Gramm, was named "villain of the month" by the Clean Air Trust in January 2002 for her work in opposition to federal regulations aimed at protecting health and the environment. The nonprofit trust charges that through his considerable donations, "Koch basically rents the university's name to give a patina of credibility to Wendy Gramm's anti-environmental agenda."182</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The James M. Buchanan Center for the Study of Political Economy encompasses the Center for Study of Public Choice and the Center for Market Processes and is associated with the Institute for Humane Studies. Of the Buchanan Center's grant, the president of GMU remarked, "We believe this support will help us become a national center of excellence of study of the relationship between the polity and the economy."183 Another $3 million grant in 2001 from the Charles G. Koch Foundation allowed the university to establish the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science (ICES) with its seven prestigious professors of experimental economics at GMU.184</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GMU also directed some of the Koch foundation funding to its Law and Economics Center (LEC) at its School of Law. Flipside.org reports that the LEC's mission is to "teach federal judges that the goal of the law should be to maximize the wealth of society by promoting the efficient use of scarce resources." To do so, the center sponsors annual eight-week training conferences at resort locations for federal and state judges. Nearly 800 judges, including two U.S. Supreme Court justices, have participated in the program since it began in 1976. The LEC also holds "economic institutes for law professors and law institutes for economists" (e.g., the Economics of Private Law institute), so that the two disciplines may become more intertwined.185</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to its donations to the LEC and FREE, the Koch family foundations also provide significant contributions to other conservative legal organizations. Clint Bolick, a rigid opponent of affirmative action at the Landmark Center for Civil Rights, and William Mellor, former president of PRI, asked the Koch family for financial backing for a libertarian public-interest law firm to advocate for school vouchers, faith-based social service programs and property rights and to oppose affirmative action. The organization became the conservative Institute for Justice in 1991, and it continues to receive substantial funding from the Koch family foundations.186 The Federalist Society also receives a great deal of funding from the Koch family.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://old.mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=9</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">------</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">T Hartmann SLAPP lawsuits</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politicians, staffers, and flacks often have legal background (perhaps prepares to argue and write laws).&nbsp; The mainstream green movement developed considerable legal and policy expertise in order to use the Clean Air etc acts to force corporations (and sometimes the government itself) to protect the environment and public health.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gov't can also use law as weapon: Nixon enemy list investigated by FBI and IRS.&nbsp; Corps can use deep pockets to force adversaries to surrender, even when in the right (e.g., Monsanto on farmers and seed cleaner).&nbsp; Corps can also use lawyers to deflect or delay gov't enforcement, which ends up being the same thing.&nbsp; The tobacco industry routinely staved off lawsuits and regulations for decades.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More ominously, the ascendancy of a right-wing Supreme Court has been a tremendous help.&nbsp; The Citizens United case allows unlimited and untraceable money into the political process, including the election of judges themselves (e.g., coal company state Sup Ct justice).&nbsp; A conservative supreme court refused to allow a complete vote count in Florida (assisted by brooks Bros Riot, supported by Abramoff, Enron, Rove, Exxon?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Law should the MOST moderating influence: judges are often appointed for life, and they are bound by precedent, and constantly subject to review.&nbsp; Also presumably old and respected in their community.&nbsp; Conservatives are wary of "acticist " jusges who seek to supplant the legislature in making laws. (do "strict constructivsts" anticipate tea party consitutionalists?]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">--</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Legal Foundation (Founded by Daniel Popeo (of WLF) and run by Michael Carvin) - It says: "we deal exclusively with media issues."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Atlantic Legal Foundation (PM supported) Run by James Richards with strong links to Stephen Whelan (husband of Elizabeth Whelan) and the ACSH - claims to be "committed to redressing the bias against business which manifests itself in favor of narrow "consumer" or "environmental" concerns."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Legal Center in the Public Interest - Ernest Heuter (It does no litigation work, but is PM supported) It was founded by PLF, and has no members-only a board of directors. It acts as an umbrella and communications hub.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pacific Legal Center (Sacramento) - Ron Zumbrun - This is the nation's oldest and largest with a 1983 staff of 20 (PM supported)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Southern States Legal Center (New Orleans) founded in 1983 by Elizabeth Williams.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mountain States Legal Center (founded by the PLF)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Great Plains Legal Foundation (founded by the PLF), and now called Landmark (Kansas City)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Landmark Legal Foundation Run by Mark Levin. Scaife used this organization to fund the anti-Clinton Arkansas Project (He gave them $250,000 - and more than $1 million over a few years).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Chamber Litigation Center Inc. (Washington) - affiliated with US Chamber of Commerce - run by Stephen Bokat - and says it is "unabashedly pro-business." (PM worked with them and the Business RoundTable)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Capital Legal Foundation (Washington) - run by Dan Burt and funded by Scaife</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Washington Legal Foundation - founded by Daniel Popeo (independent of the PLF but supported by both PM and its subsidiary, Kraft Foods)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mayer NYer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Kochs���?¢�������?� subsidization of a pro-corporate movement fulfills, in many ways, the vision laid out in a secret 1971 memo that Lewis Powell, then a Virginia attorney, wrote two months before he was nominated to the Supreme Court. The antiwar movement had turned its anger on defense contractors, such as Dow Chemical, and Ralph Nader was leading a public-interest crusade against corporations. Powell, writing a report for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, urged American companies to fight back. The greatest threat to free enterprise, he warned, was not Communism or the New Left but, rather, ���¢�?�������respectable elements of society���¢����������¢��������intellectuals, journalists, and scientists. To defeat them, he wrote, business leaders needed to wage a long-term, unified campaign to change public opinion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporate think-tank influence extends even into the branch of government designed to be immune to it: the judiciary. Some of that influence is exerted by intervention in lawsuits to make arguments that favor industry. In 1999, for example, the Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, the funding arm of CSE, paid for "friend of the court" briefs that sought to declare the Clean Air Act unconstitutional. Where might a nonprofit charity like CSEF come up on short notice with the money required to pay lawyers who can charge $5,000 an hour? Answer: the Claude Lambe Foundation, also controlled by the Kochs, which gave CSEF $600,000 for "general operating support"; the DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund, which kicked in another $250,000; and General Electric, which matched the DaimlerChrysler Fund���¢��������s donation. There���¢��?������s no way of knowing whether that $1.1 million paid for the legal briefs, but that amount buys a lot of lawyers, even at Washington prices.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Influence is also exercised less directly. For example, the same Lambe Foundation that gave to CSEF also donated $150,000 to the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), based in Bozeman, Montana. FREE conducts seminars for federal judges���¢��������including those at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where CSEF���¢��������s briefs were filed. FREE is in ideological lockstep with organizations like CSEF: While the foundation works the legal angle, FREE "educates" the judges who will hear the cases. Indeed, the two judges, Douglas Ginsburg and Stephen Williams, who held the Clean Air Act unconstitutional (a ruling that was later overturned by the Supreme Court), based their decision largely on the arguments advanced by CSEF. And both judges had enjoyed the all-expenses-paid FREE seminars. (Ginsburg attended them each year from 1993 to ���¢��������98; Williams went in 1993 and 1998.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Montana seminars feature horseback riding and hiking at FREE���¢��������s dude ranch near Big Sky. In each of two years, 1999 and 2000, 6 percent of the federal judiciary took in these junkets. A typical day includes morning presentations, free time in the afternoon, an evening cocktail hour, and then dinner with a speech by, say, Alfred DeCrane Jr., retired head of Texaco, called "The Environment���?¢�������?�A CEO���¢��������s Perspective."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">??</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FREE says its seminars focus on "economic implications of science, risk, and environmental issues." Sounds innocent enough, until you peruse some of the reading material. One seminar handout discusses the "bureaucratic pathologies of . . . agencies like the EPA" and the "irresponsible efforts [of] . . . environmentalists hostile toward industrial civilization." FREE defends its seminars and its reliance on quasi-corporate funding on the grounds that "federal judges are smart, mature, sophisticated men and women . . . disposed by training to be discerning, critical, and alert to shoddy arguments."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It appears that FREE seminars have been successful at winning over these discerning judges. According to the Community Rights Counsel, a public-interest law firm based in Washington, D.C., that has gathered and analyzed an immense amount of data on FREE, in one case, "the judge ruled in favor of a litigant that [was] funded by the same special interests that helped fund his seminar." That judge, Stephen Williams (the same one who ruled the Clean Air Act unconstitutional), reversed himself in a highly publicized suit brought by the timber industry to gut the Endangered Species Act. At issue in Sweet Home v. Babbitt was the power of the government to protect endangered species by regulating habitat. In a two-to-one opinion issued on July 23, 1993, Williams and another judge upheld that power. Two weeks later, Williams attended his first FREE seminar. When he returned to Washington, he granted a rehearing to the timber industry, switched his vote, then wrote an opinion (later overturned by the Supreme Court) striking down the habitat regulations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Central to the functioning of American democracy is a judicial system that dispenses justice with an even hand. Yet CSEF, FREE, and other like-minded groups seem intent on reshaping the judiciary in their own image. Chief among these groups is the shadowy but powerful Federalist Society. Another regular recipient of Koch largesse, the Federalist Society is described by the Washington Monthly as "the best-organized, best-funded, and most effective legal network operating in this country." (See "Lay of the Land," March/April 2002.) Lawyers who belong to or are active in the society include at least two Supreme Court justices�?��¢�����?���Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas���¢???�������as well as dozens of other federal judges, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Solicitor General Ted Olson, and Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham. The society boasts a total membership of "20,000 legal professionals [and] active chapters in 60 cities." Yet, according to its 1998 federal tax return (which was provided to me when researching this story and which mistakenly included its list of donors), the Federalist Society���¢���???����s income that year included $4,934,325 in grants from the Kochs���¢�������� and other such foundations but zero���¢��������yes, zero�?��¢�����?���in membership dues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200207/thinktank_printable.asp</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jud Confirm Network</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">r reed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/200905190002</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">stein 2005?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">���?����· Center for Individual Rights: $2.1 million 37 annual budget</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">������?�· Pacific Legal Foundation: $6.5 million annual budget</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">����?���· Institute for Justice: $4.7 million annual budget</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">�������· Landmark Legal Foundation: $1.1 million annual budget</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">�������· Mountain States Legal Foundation: $2.1 million annual budget</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">�������· Washington Legal Foundation: $3.2 million annual budget</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">��?�����· Judicial Watch: $14.3 million annual budget</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">���?����· Federalist Society: $3.6 million annual budget</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hightower</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The entire court system is infested</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cowboy hat By Jim Hightower - Sun., 1/30/11</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Unfortunately, the corporatization of America's judiciary is not just a problem at the top. For more than 30 years, there has been a concerted effort by such ultra-wealthy corporate supremists as the Kochs, Scaifes, DeVoses, Coors, and Murdochs to place extremist, laissez-faire ideologues throughout the federal court structure. Using their extensive, well funded, and coordinated network of front groups, these moneyed elites can now move litigation through corporate-friendly courts at the district, appellate, and supreme levels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">??</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, the legal effort by right-wing operatives to scuttle Obama's health care reform has taken the path of least political resistance, for their lawyers know how to go court shopping. They file their cases in the courts of judges who were put there because they are ideologically opposed to such things as government regulation of insurance giants and health care conglomerates. Some two dozen of these 'Obamacare' cases have been generated in the past few months, pushed by a who's who of corporate-funded fronts, including the American Center for Law and Justice, the Goldwater Institute, Judicial Watch, Liberty University, the Thomas More Law Center, the Pacific Justice Institute&nbsp; http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/groups/pacific-justice-institute , and the Pacific Legal Foundation. Carefully choosing their courts, they've filed multiple cases that go after various parts of the reform law. As an official of the Goldwater group puts it: "[Obama's] health care plan will not die in a single sweep. It will take a thousand cuts."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of these cuts has come from US District Judge Henry Hudson of Richmond, Virginia. On December 13, he ruled that a key provision of Obama's reform is unconstitutional, a ruling at odds with 14 other federal judges who'd dismissed similar challenges. The judge had to resort to tortured reasoning from the Civil War era to push this flawed case forward, but, hey--you can't let legal niceties get in the way of ideology.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Peek under Hudson's judicial robe, and you'll find a naked partisan with a long career in hard-right Republican politics. A protege of Ronald Reagan and his detestable attorney general, Ed Meese, Hudson ran unsuccessfully for a Virginia congressional seat in 1991, then was given two GOP political appointments in the state before George W lifted him onto the federal bench in 2002.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even today, as he sits in judgment of politically motivated cases, Hudson continues to draw annual income as an owner of Campaign Solutions, a Republican political consulting firm. One of its successful clients is Virginia's GOP attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, who was elected with the firm's help in 2009. Ken just happens to be the official who filed the right wing's case against Obama's health care reform in Judge Hudson's court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ALEC TASK FORCE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Civil Justice Task Force</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justin Amash (R-MI), Member, Civil Justice Task Force[22]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Jan Angel (R-WA), Member (2009-2010), Civil Justice Task Force[23]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judge Richard A. Bandstra (Michigan 3rd Court of Appeals through January 2003), Former "Public Sector Chairman" (year unknown, but during the time he was a Republican Michigan state representative from Grand Rapids, 1985-1994), Civil Justice Task Force[24]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gregory A. Brower (United States Attorney for the District of Nevada, former Republican Nevada State Legislator), Former Member, Civil Justice Task Force[25]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sen. Adam Driggs (R-AZ), Member, Civil Justice Task Force[26]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Del. William (Bill) Howell (R-VA), Former "Public Sector Chairman" (2010), Civil Justice Task Force[27]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Lance Kinzer (R-KS), Civil Justice Task Force Executive Committee member[28]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marvin Kleeb (R-KS), Member, Civil Justice Task Force[29]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Michael R. O'Neal (R-KS), Member, Civil Justice Task Force[30]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sen. Debra Plowman (R-ME), Member, Civil Justice Task Force[31]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scott Pruitt (Oklahoma Attorney General, former Republican State Senator of Oklahoma),[32] Former "Public Sector Chairman" (2004), Civil Justice Task Force[33]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sen. Dennis D. Pyle (R-KS), Member[34]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Articles and reports focusing on the right-wing attack on the judicial system</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hijacking Justice: The Federalist Society, a Right-wing network of lawyers, judges and supporters, is undoing civil rights and other gains made through the courts [122], George E. Curry & Trevor W. Coleman, Emerge, October 1999</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Federalist Society Becomes a Force in Washington, Conservative Group's Members Take Key Roles in Bush White House and Help Shape Policy and Judicial Appointments [123], Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post, April 18, 2001</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; A Hostile Takeover, How the Federalist Society is capturing the federal courts, [124] Martin Garbus, The American Prospect, March 1, 2003</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Justice For Sale: Shortchanging the Public Interest for Private Gain [125], Review and Commentary by Richard L. Grossman, The Workbook, Fall 1993</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Federalist Society and the Challenge to a Democratic Jurisprudence [126], Institute for Democracy Studies, undated</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law [127]. (PDF file, approx. 1 MB.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Also available in an online HTML version [128], David C. Johnson, Commonweal Institute, October, 2003</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Vast Right-Wing Collusion, Biased Judges, Big Money, and Tax Exempt Organizations Force Their Agenda [129], Mike Kress, American Politics Journal, March 16, 1999</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Federalist Society, The Conservative Cabal That's Transforming American Law [130], Jerry Landay, Washington Monthly, March, 2000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Don't Be Fooled. They're Activists, Too [131], Simon Lazarus, Washington Post, June 3, 2001</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Tipping the antitrust scales, How the right helped make the federal courts safe for Microsoft. [132], Andrew Leonard, Salon, March, 1999</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; ?? THE TAKINGS PROJECT: Using Federal Courts to Attack Community and Environmental Protections [133], Douglas T. Kendall & Charles P. Lord, Community Rights Counsel, April, 1998</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Issues Groups Fund Seminars for Judges [134], Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, April 9, 1998</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Right's Judicial Juggernaut [135], Jack Newfield, The Nation, September 19, 2002</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Federalist Society: From Obscurity to Power [136], A Report by the People For the American Way Foundation, undated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Federalist Society [137], Right Web Profile, November 30, 2006</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Judges get FREE lessons on property rights [138], Dustin Solberg, HighCountryNews.org, July 6, 1998</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Judges' Free Trips Go Unreported, U.S. Jurists Say They Forgot To Comply With Ethics Law [139], Joe Stephens, Washington Post, June 30, 2000</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The initial introductory chapter I did not find particularly helpful and can be bypassed. The book begins to hit its stride in the second chapter on the "liberal legal network." It is helpful to have handy a copy of Laura Kalman's perceptive "The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism" to fully ingest the author's analysis. Basically, the author suggests, a combination of liberal legal groups (e.g., NAACP LDF; ACLU), elite law schools and their liberal faculty, the American Bar Association, and especially the Ford Foundation during the 1960's formed a potent coalition pushing the incorporate of liberal ideas into the law. This is, of course, also the era of Warren Court activism. Particular important in this regard was the "Gideon" decision which in turn led to the development of the Legal Services Program which unleashed numerous law suits pushing liberal ends in public interest litigation. Much of this activity was encouraged by generous support from the Ford Foundation. This activity generated a conservative response via conservative public interest law firms such as the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Chamber of Commerce. However, because of being controlled by business interests, lacking academic support, and making tactical mistakes, the first generation of conservative public interest firms generally was not successful.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A highly favorable development was the introduction of "law and economics" into legal analysis, and the two chapters devoted to this topic are among the best in the book. Particularly important in this regard are, of course, Judge Posner, Henry Manne (who established various programs at several schools and remade George Mason Law School), and the Olin Foundation, which becomes sort of the conservative Ford Foundation. Probably the strongest chapter in the book is devoted to the Federalist Society, which skillfully lays out its history, goals, and methods. The author is insistent that "boundary maintenance" separates the FS from its members'political activity, but I found this argument less than convincting. The FS did provide a network of highly skilled lawyers and faculty who generated vital legal analysis to support the conservative legal movement. So, when the second waive of conservative public interest law firms arrives in the late 1980's ("Center for Individual Rights" and the "Institute for Justice"), it is successful given the lessons of the past, the presence of the Federalist Society, the academic foundation laid by the law and economics movement, and highly effective leadership.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">user rev of Teles , Steven M. The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div>