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LEGAL FDN nlcpi

oops, see duplicate:

this is now generic node of the regional legal foundations

cfact ggle doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U5j0YOSMEe_cOinOskb2ltfGfR2XbeEcBNy7IU4axp8/edit

note that the CoC has a similarly named entity, NCLC,  and its history is entwined , see below

===

CoC has Inst Legal Reform (~ climate lawsuits, also fake newspapers), IWF has legal arm too

https://ucs-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/global-warming/ExxonMobil-grants-2020.pdf

ExxonMobil Foundation and Corporate Grants to Climate Science Denier and Obstructionist Organizations

Organization      2020         Total Years

Acton Institute $365,000 1998–2007

Advancement of Sound Science Center $50,000 2000–2004

American Conservative Union Foundation $90,000 2005–2008

American Council for Capital Formation

Center for Policy Research

$1,779,523 1998–2015

American Council on Science and Health $345,000 2000–2018

American Enterprise Institute $100,000 $4,860,000 1998–2020

American Legislative Exchange Council $1,928,200 1998–2017

American Spectator Foundation $115,000 2005–2009

Annapolis Center $1,153,500 1998–2009

Atlas Economic Research Foundation $1,082,500 1998–2009

Capital Research Center / Greenwatch $265,000 2000–2007

Cato Institute$125,000 1998–2006

Center for a New Europe-USA $170,000 2003–2005

Center for American and International Law

(formerly Southwestern Legal Foundation)

$560,650 1998–2019

Center for Defense of Free Enterprise $230,000 2003–2005

Center for the Study of CO2 and Global Change$100,000 1998–2006

Chemical Education Foundation $155,000 2001–2007

Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow $582,000 1998–2007

Communications Institute $515,000 2004–2011

Competitive Enterprise Institute $2,005,000 1998–2005

Congress of Racial Equality $325,0002003–2008

Consumer Alert $70,000 1998–2004

Environmental Literacy Council $100,000 2005–2007

Federal Focus $125,000 2005

Federalist Society $280,000 2000–2019

Foundation for Research on Economics and the

Environment

$450,000 1998–2012

Fraser Institute $120,000 2003–2004

Free Enterprise Action Institute $50,000 2003

Free Enterprise Education Institute $80,000 2004–2005

FreedomWorks (formerly Citizens for a

Sound Economy)

$380,250 1998–2001

Frontiers of Freedom $1,272,000 2000–2007

George C. Marshall Institute $865,0001999–2011

Heartland Institute $676,500 1998–2006

Heritage Foundation $830,000 1998–2013

Hoover Institution (Stanford University) $430,000 1998–2019

ExxonMobil Foundation and Corporate Grants

to Climate Science Denier and Obstructionist Organizations

Organization 2020 Total Years

Hudson Institute$40,000 2000–2015

Independent Institute $85,000 1998–2007

Independent Women's Forum $65,000 2002–2013

Institute for Energy Research /

American Energy Alliance

$337,000 2002–2007

Institute for Senior Studies $30,000 2005

Institute for Study of Earth and Man $76,500 2000–2005

International Policy Network - North America $390,0002003–2006

International Republican Institute $115,000 1998–2005

Landmark Legal Foundation $90,000 2002–2010

Law and Economics Center

(George Mason University)

$475,000 1998–2015

Lexington Institute $10,000 2002

Lindenwood University $40,000 2004–2008

Manhattan Institute $1,415,200 1998–2019

Media Institute $120,000 1998–2005

Media Research Center / Cybercast News Service $362,500 2003–2009

Mercatus Center (George Mason University) $415,000 2003–2016

Mountain States Legal Foundation $90,000 2008–2019

National Association of Neighborhoods $225,000 2002–2010

National Black Chamber of Commerce $1,195,0002002–2018

National Center for Policy Analysis $645,900 1998–2008

National Center for Public Policy Research $445,000 1998–2008

National Legal Center for the Public Interest $216,500 1998–2006

National Taxpayers Union Foundation $865,000 2006–2017

Pacific Legal Foundation $285,000 1998–2015

Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy $665,000 1998–2009

Property and Environment Research Center

(formerly Political Economy Research Center)

$155,000 1998–2007

Reason Foundation / Reason Public Policy Institute $321,000 1998–2005

Regulatory Checkbook $50,000 2006

Regulatory Studies Center

(George Washington University)

$140,000 $1,207,000 2013–2020

Science and Environmental Policy Project $20,000 1998–2000

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory $417,212 2005–2009SOON

Tech Central Science Foundation $95,000 2003

Texas Public Policy Foundation $80,0001998–2011

U.S. Chamber of Commerce $250,000 $5,045,0002014–2020

Washington Legal Foundation $655,000 1998–2019

Totals $490,000$39,273,935 1998-2020

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Juris_Link

american Juris Link (AJL) is a right-wing, Arizona-based 501(c)(3) litigation center that has been tax exempt since 2019.[1] AJL’s founder and president Carrie Ann Donnell describes AJL as “basically like the SPN for litigators.”[2]

AJL advertises on its site that it provides local counsel, organizes amici briefs, and offers personalized services.[3] AJL tracks and supports right-wing legal challenges to upend COVID-19 health restrictions, fight workers’ rights to unionize, and coordinate legal strategies and amici.

AJL was incubated by and is an associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN), a group of right-wing think tanks and other politically-active nonprofits.

News and Controversies

Fighting COVID-19 Public Health Efforts

Since the beginning of the pandemic, AJL has assisted numerous organizations in filing lawsuits to upend public health restrictions put in place in order to stop the spread of COVID-19. It holds a “regularly scheduled COVID Litigation Roundtable” for strategizing and collaborating against COVID orders, and has partnered with Ballotpedia to create a COVID-19 lawsuit tracker of every court case challenging public health orders due to the pandemic, funded by a $41,000 grant from DonorsTrust, the Koch political network’s preferred donor conduit.[2]

AJL also touts that it helped find local counsel for “COVID-related lawsuits.”[2]

Supporting Union Crushing Efforts

In 2020, AJL worked to support SPN’s Ohio affiliate, the Buckeye Institute, in its unsuccessful attempt to get the U.S. Supreme Court to take an appeal in Reisman v. Associated Faculties of the University of Maine. The case had attempted to overturn the longstanding practice of allowing democratically elected public-sector unions to exclusively represent employees in negotiations over pay and working conditions. [2]

The group “recruited” the Maine Policy Institute (formerly the Maine Heritage Policy Center) to file a supporting brief and “secured” 12 additional amicus groups, many of which are SPN members, to sign on, according to a March 2020 newsletter. [2]

AJL also helps match groups working to convince union members to drop out of their unions with lawyers aligned with their mission.[2]

Ties to the Bradley Foundation

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation provided American Juris Link with $100,000 "for start-up support" in 2020.[2] Bradley has long emphasized the funding of litigation efforts as part of its larger strategy to weaponize philanthropy to build up a right-wing infrastructure.[4]

Bradley Files

In 2017, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publishers of SourceWatch, launched a series of articles on the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, exposing the inner-workings of one of America's largest right-wing foundations. 56,000 previously undisclosed documents laid bare the Bradley Foundation's highly politicized agenda. CMD detailed Bradley's efforts to map and measure right wing infrastructure nationwide, including by dismantling and defunding unions to impact state elections; bankrolling discredited spin doctor Richard Berman and his many front groups; and more.

Find the series here at ExposedbyCMD.org.

Ties to the Koch Brothers

The Charles G. Koch Foundation contributed $20,000 to AJL "for future payment" in 2019.

Ties to the State Policy Network

American Juris Link was incubated by the State Policy Network and is an associate member of SPN. SPN's Executive Vice President, Tony Woodlief is on AJL's board. The organization has also worked together with other SPN Members to oppose COVID-19 public health measures and oppose unions.[2]

SPN President and CEO Tracie Sharp praised the new partnership with AJL as “a durable freedom infrastructure…where you have think tanks…locking arms with litigators to really press forward to be strategic, to be agile.”[2]

“This is how we are going to have state solutions, national impact in both the short term and the long term,” Sharp said.[2]

At SPN's 27th Annual Meeting, AJL sponsored a litigation network reception. The description read, "Celebrate your victories and deliberate over your hardest legal questions while you share a drink with attorneys from some of the 50+ nonprofits litigating for freedom and the rule of law. Catch up with old colleagues, meet new allies, and learn how a new nonprofit network for litigators can offer free services and connect you with other professionals to maximize your impact and efficiency."[5]

SPN is a web of right-wing “think tanks” and tax-exempt organizations in 50 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and the United Kingdom. As of January 2021, SPN's membership totals 163. Today's SPN is the tip of the spear of far-right, nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party. SPN Executive Director Tracie Sharp told the Wall Street Journal in 2017 that the revenue of the combined groups was some $80 million, but a 2019 analysis of SPN's main members IRS filings by the Center for Media and Democracy shows that the combined revenue is over $120 million.[6] Although SPN's member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth investigation, "EXPOSED: The State Policy Network -- The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government," reveals that SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing,American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the Koch brothers and the national right-wing network of funders.[7]

In response to CMD's report, SPN Executive Director Tracie Sharp told national and statehouse reporters that SPN affiliates are "fiercely independent." Later the same week, however, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer caught Sharp in a contradiction. In her article, "Is IKEA the New Model for the Conservative Movement?," the Pulitzer-nominated reporter revealed that, in a recent meeting behind closed doors with the heads of SPN affiliates around the country, Sharp "compared the organization’s model to that of the giant global chain IKEA." She reportedly said that SPN "would provide 'the raw materials,' along with the 'services' needed to assemble the products. Rather than acting like passive customers who buy finished products, she wanted each state group to show the enterprise and creativity needed to assemble the parts in their home states. 'Pick what you need,' she said, 'and customize it for what works best for you.'" Not only that, but Sharp "also acknowledged privately to the members that the organization's often anonymous donors frequently shape the agenda. 'The grants are driven by donor intent,' she told the gathered think-tank heads. She added that, often, 'the donors have a very specific idea of what they want to happen.'"[8]

A set of coordinated fundraising proposals obtained and released by The Guardian in early December 2013 confirm many of these SPN members' intent to change state laws and policies, referring to "advancing model legislation" and "candidate briefings." These activities "arguably cross the line into lobbying," The Guardian notes.[9]

AJL Collaborators

The Center for Media and Democracy identified the following organizations that have received assistance from AJL through February 2021:[2]

Funding

American Juris Link is not required to disclose its funders but major foundation supporters can be found through their IRS filings. Here are some known contributors:

Core Financials

2019[11]

Personnel

Staff

As of February 2021:

Board of Directors

As of February 2021:[13]

Contact Information

American Juris Link

:{7000 N 16 St, Suite 120-155

Phoenix, AZ 85020}:

EIN: 84-2191039

Website: americanjurislink.org

Email: info@americanjurislink.org

Articles and Resources

Related SourceWatch

....docs 990

ggl doc endgame:

LEGAL FOUNDATIONS

PACIFIC LEGAL 1973

memo --> 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.

[ 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.]

[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).

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).]

{Soon the California Chamber of Commerce would propose what would become in 1973 the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit set up in Sacramento, California, from seed money raised by J. Simon Fluor of the Fluor Corporation [MIC]. And in 1975, the National Legal Center for the Public Interest (NLCPI) was formed "to assist in the establishment of independent regional litigation foundations dedicated to a balanced view of the role of law in achieving economic and social progress."}

WASHINGTON LEGAL FOUNDATION

CIR Vioxx 38 - 60K dead;  Tozzi: CRE went after hayes; ~EPA GHG;  Starr Olsen  TORT --> defund the left (class action?)  RICO? Popeo Samp CoC

D'Aubusson

Merck called half dozen medical schools to get them to stop talking about harm of Vioxx, including Stanford; dossier on Singh

TROY VIOXX: DQA, Graham, Bork

FDA regs 22% of economy;

Troy does tobacco and pharma at Wiley, then FDA (1st politica vs civil service appointee; // to RR put pro-corp ppl to run regulatory agencies, but maybe they actually knew something about the industry; B43 staffed with corp PR hacks, eg Cooney CEQ Connaughton, not to mention Timberwolf, beef boy etc).  Troy not only helps industry worm in, but then lays foundation for them to continue to undermine regs after he’s left; goes back to CTT and legal foundations CIR WLF, w/ Graham [Lamar Smith builds on this DQA → IQA to gut EPA regs and stack science advisory boards, cut NOAA and NSF budget, and get “quality” research vs new incarnation of Junk science?]

[But the Bush administration made the chief counsel a political appointee for the first time since the 1980s, easing out civil-servant Porter and empowering Troy...Appointed in August, 2001, Troy had vast authority. With no FDA commissioner until November 2002, Troy reigned for more than a year as top administrator in an agency that regulates 22 percent of the U.S. economy.

"He sent a signal to companies that if you want to deal with the FDA on a number of issues, he's the man to see," said a senior FDA official.

In three years, Troy has held 129 meetings with lobbyists and others with issues before the FDA.

Mark McClellan, commissioner from October 2002 to March 2004, held 30 such meetings, FDA records show.

From 1998 to 2001, Troy's predecessor, Margaret Porter, held one meeting.]

{August 2001: Bush Appoints Daniel E. Troy as the FDA’s chief counsel

President Bush appoints Daniel E. Troy as the FDA’s chief counsel. [FINANCIAL TIMES, 8/14/2001] Before taking the position, Troy was a partner at the law firm Wiley Rein & Fielding, where he sued the FDA several times on behalf of drug companies, including pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. He has repeatedly argued that the agency has only limited authority to regulate drug companies. Troy is mostly known for his involvement in the landmark Supreme Court case that ruled the FDA does not have the authority to regulate tobacco. [BOSTON GLOBE, 12/22/2002; DENVER POST, 5/23/2004] }

Troy "was a symbol of what is rotten at the FDA: the pharmaceutical industry's influence has ensured that business interests take precedence over public safety.

[In a dramatic legal novelty, the FDA has intervened for manufacturers in lawsuits, urging courts to dismiss damages claims against them. FDA briefs have helped the world's two largest drug companies win product-liability cases.

The FDA says courts are not equipped to judge a product's safety. On regulation, officials say their position reflects court rulings that warn about restricting commercial speech. Allowing inconclusive health claims on food labels such as walnuts gives consumers more information, the agency says...A Queens-born Columbia Law School standout, Troy, 44, came to the FDA primed for activism: Clerk for conservative icon Robert Bork; partner at blue-chip Wiley, Rein & Fielding[acta anna neal?]; scholar at the pro-business American Enterprise Institute; litigant for the anti-regulatory Washington Legal Foundation.

Representing a tobacco company against the FDA in the late 1990s, Troy helped win a landmark Supreme Court ruling blocking the agency's attempt to regulate tobacco products.

Litigating for the legal foundation, which drug-company foundations help fund, Troy challenged the FDA's restrictions on promoting drugs for uses the FDA has not approved.

The policy, Troy wrote in 1999, reflects "an overzealous FDA."

Appointed in August, 2001, Troy had vast authority. With no FDA commissioner until November 2002, Troy reigned for more than a year as top administrator in an agency that regulates 22 percent of the U.S. economy.

"He sent a signal to companies that if you want to deal with the FDA on a number of issues, he's the man to see," said a senior FDA official.

In three years, Troy has held 129 meetings with lobbyists and others with issues before the FDA.

Mark McClellan, commissioner from October 2002 to March 2004, held 30 such meetings, FDA records show.

From 1998 to 2001, Troy's predecessor, Margaret Porter, held one meeting..'] th frank

" WLF is to the first amendment what the NRA is to the second amendment. That is, every argument by WLF begins and ends with the first amendment as it applies to a special interest group -- i.e., businesses like the pharmaceutical industry. "

{ Expanding corporate influence over the U.S. educational system was one of the crucial themes of Powell's memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Corporate power in society gained longevity from influencing the opinions of educated young adults about to enter the workforce and helped reshape institutions of higher learning to prioritize commercial interests.}

==

National Legal Center for the Public Interest, Washington

Washington Legal Foundation, Washington

Pacific Legal Foundation, Sacramento

Landmark Legal Foundation, Kansas City, Missouri

Atlantic Legal Foundation, New York

Mid-Atlantic Legal Foundation, Philadelphia

Southeastern Legal Foundation, Atlanta

New England Legal Foundation, Boston

Mid-American Legal Foundation, Chicago

Capital Legal Foundation, Washington

The Mountain States Legal Foundation, Denver

==

srcwtch

National Legal Center for the Public Interest (NLCPI) describes itself as a law and educational foundation. According to its own website it was "created in 1975, [and] is committed to fostering knowledge about law and the administration of justice."

The website goes on to explain that "The Center contributes to the development of public debate and policy by providing the public and private sectors with timely information on key legal, legislative, regulatory, and economic issues of national importance. It does this through its educational publications and educational forums. The Center does not litigate." [1]

NLCPI follows the political agendas of its right-wing funders, vehemently opposing affirmative action and financing books such as Conservatives in Power: The Task of Governing by Terry Eastland.

They also founded and publish the "Public Interest Law Review", a heavily conservative publication "aimed at readers with an interest in the making and execution of public policy (law professors, political scientists, government officials, judges, and journalists who cover legal affairs)…[The] annual review discusses and debates issues of consequence for the public interest. Recent court decisions are covered and book reviews are included." [2]

It is at the core of a large network of right-wing, business-oriented Legal Centers funded by the Scaife, Coor, Bradley, Olin interests.

Contents[hide]

History

This is a memberless organisation (consisting only of a Board). It wasfounded in1975 as a 501(c)3 non-profit, based in Washington. The Pacific Legal Foundation (a right-wing, pro-business, legal group run by Ron Zumbrun) had conducted a study which concluded that the most effective way to counter the liberal, public-interest legal foundation model, was through an umbrella model creating a separate national coordinating entity for new PLFs in other regions. Initial funding was to come from J. Simon Fluor and Richard Mellon Scaife.

The PLF subsequently went on to establish the New England Legal Foundation, Great Plains Legal Foundation (now Landmark Legal Foundation), and Mountain States Legal Foundation.

But the NLCPI, in turn, was instrumental itself in spawning the Atlantic Legal Foundation (ex Mid Atlantic LF), Capital Legal Center, Mid-America Legal Foundation (not to be confused with Mid-Atlantic LF which became the Atlantic LC), and SouthEastern Legal Center.

The organisation's propaganda says that it doesn't involve itself in litigation as did many of its offspring, but at one time it did file suit (via Capital Legal Foundation - with $2 million of Scaife funding) on behalf of General Westmoreland against CBS News. However, more recently it has taken on the role of acting as coordinator and communications center for all of these business-oriented legal-lobbyist/activist groups.

Funds pass through this network of legal foundations from on to another, so it is impossible to say which is being funded from what source with complete accuracy. However these are all primarily supported by the Sarah Scaife & Carthage Foundations, together with money from the Coors (beer) and Fluor families, and from the Southern Pacific Co. The NLCPI itself was initially funded by the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

Direction

The organisation has been led by Ernest B ("Ernie") Hueter, described in a Tobacco Institute report as a "one-time professional gag-writer", [3] who later became the Chairman and CEO of Interstate Brands (which makes bread, cakes and confectionary). NOTE: His name is often mis-spelled as Heuter. TWINKIES? WONDER?

In 1988 the organisation inherited a number of aides and associates of Ed Meese, the former Counsellor to President Reagan and Attorney General (also the cover-up expert over the Iran-contra affair). Meese had also been instrumental in co-founding (with other Reagan aides) the Pacific Legal Foundationwhen Reagan was State Governor: this was created as an attack-dog which could be directed (at a safe distance) against the Californian liberals and organisations like the Sierra Club.

The NLCPI is given grants for its day-to-day activities by large corporations such as Philip Morris/Kraft, UST, Alcoa and ExxonMobil, and it also receives special grants for specific activities on their behalf.

In 1990 Philip Morris contributed $2,500 to cost of publishing "Pernicious Ideas and Costly Consequences: The Intellectual Roots of the Tort Crisis" which was part of the tobacco (and other) industries long-running project to attack product liability laws, reduce punative damages, and limit class actions. Kraft General Foods (a PM subsidiary) also contributed $2,500 to other publications.

Philip Morris's 1991 budget reports that the legal foundation has a budget of "somewhat under a million dollars", which included a $10,000 contribution from Philip Morris/Kraft.

It tends to focus these days on its program of publications, and so acts more like a think-tank than a normal legal lobbyist.

Relevant articles

Personnel

Directors

Emeriti

Source

Legal Advisory Council

The Legal Advisory Council of the NLCPI, led by Eugene B. Meyer, functions as a support group for the NLCPI organization. The Council provides the Center with assistance in identifying projects and outside participants and additionally functions as a speakers bureau for the Center's activities. [6]

Source

Funding

In addition to the corporations below, NLCPI has received grants from:

Past contributors include:

Contact Information

1600 K Street, N.W.,

Suite 800

Washington, DC 20006

Tel: (202) 466-9360 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (202) 466-9360      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Fax: (202) 466-9366

Website: http://www.nlcpi.org

Related Resources

Search the Documents Archives of the Tobacco IndustrySearch the Documents Archives of the Tobacco IndustrySearch the Documents Archives of the Tobacco IndustrySearch the Documents Archives of the Tobacco Industry
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library:

Retrieved from "http://www:{.sourcewatch:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:.org/index.php?title=National_Legal_Center_for_the_Public_Interest"

Categories: Tobaccowiki | Organizations | United States | Tobacco documents organizations | Law | Non-Government Organizations

LEGAL

:{

}:

NCLC

http://www.alternet.org/story/153345/the_real_history_of_'corporate_personhood'%3A_meet_the_man_to_blame_for_corporations_having_more_rights_than_you

Huge corporations, including Powell’s Philip Morris, invested millions of dollars in the Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center

an excerpt of Jeffrey Clement's Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It.)

Chavern is also founder and president of the Chamber’s Center for Women in Business.

CORP PERSON

Here Come the Foundations

Despite the Rehnquist dissents, Powell’s vision of an unregulated corporate political “marketplace,” where corporations are freed by activist courts from the policy judgment of the majority of people, won out. Powell, of course, could not have acted alone. He could not have moved a majority of the Court to create corporate rights if no one had listened to his advice to organize corporate political power to demand corporate rights. Listen they did — with the help of just the sort of massive corporate funding that Powell proposed.

Corporations and corporate executives funded a wave of new “legal foundations” in the 1970s. These legal foundations were intended to drive into every court and public body in the land the same radical message, repeated over and over again, until the bizarre began to sound normal: corporations are persons with constitutional rights against which the laws of the people must fall.

:{

}:

Huge corporations, including Powell’s Philip Morris, invested millions of dollars in the Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center and other legal foundations to bring litigation demanding new corporate rights. In rapid succession, corporations and supporters funded the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Mid-Atlantic Legal Foundation, the Mid-America Legal Foundation, the Great Plains Legal Foundation (Landmark Legal Foundation), the Washington Legal Foundation, the Northeastern Legal Foundation, the New England Legal Foundation, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, the Capital Legal Center, the National Legal Center for the Public Interest, and many others.

These foundations began filing brief after brief challenging state and federal laws across the country, pounding away at the themes of corporations as “persons,” “speakers” and holders of constitutional rights. Reading their briefs, one might think that the most powerful, richest corporations in the history of the world were some beleaguered minority fighting to overcome oppression. The foundations and the corporate lawyers argued that “corporations are persons” with the “liberty secured to all persons.” They used new phrases like “corporate speech,” the “rights of corporate speakers,” and “the corporate character of the speaker.” They demanded, as if to end an unjust silence, “the right of corporations to be heard” and “the rights of corporations to speak out.”

This corporate campaign sought to redefine the very role of corporations in American society. The message was insistent: We should no longer think of corporations as useful but potentially insidious industrial economic tools. We should no longer be concerned that corporations might leverage massive economic power into massive political power or trample the public interest for the profit of the few. Instead, we should think of corporations as pillars of liberty, institutions that Americans can trust. They would protect our freedom for us. They would stand up to “bad” government for us.

A 1977 brief of the Chamber of Commerce, for example,argued that the Court should strike down a state law that limited corporate political spending in citizens’ referendum elections because corporations help maintain our freedoms: “Business’s social role is to provide the people a valuable service which helps maintain their freedoms. … The statute at issue prevents the modern corporation from fulfilling a major social obligation. … ”

By 1978, the millions of dollars invested in the radical corporate rights campaign began to pay off. The first major victory for the corporate rights advocates came in 1978, with a corporate attack on a Massachusetts law in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti. Several international corporations — including Gillette, the Bank of Boston, and Digital Equipment Corporation — filed a lawsuit after the people of Massachusetts banned corporate political spending intended to influence a citizen referendum. Justice Lewis Powell cast the deciding vote and wrote the 5–4 decision wiping off the books the people’s law intended to keep corporate money out of citizen ballot questions. For the first time in American history, corporations had successfully claimed “speech” rights to attack laws regulating corporate money in our elections.

:{

}:

With that success, an emboldened corporate rights campaign next attacked energy and environmental laws. In the 1982 case of Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation v. Public Service Corporation of New York, utility corporations and the array of corporate legal foundations all argued that a New York law prohibiting utility corporations from promoting energy consumption violated the corporations’ rights of free speech. The corporations won again, and again Justice Powell wrote the decision for the activist Supreme Court that he had imagined in his 1971 Chamber of Commerce memo. The corporate interest in promoting energy consumption for corporate profit trumped the people’s interest in energy conservation. Over a period of six years, Justice Powell wrote four key corporate rights decisions for the Supreme Court. These unprecedented cases transformed the people’s First Amendment speech freedom into a corporate right to challenge public oversight and corporate regulation.

...

Powell led a majority of the Court to accept the repeated mantra that “corporations are persons” and corporate “voices” must be free, and the sustained attacks on the people’s laws continued for the next two decades. Oil, coal, and utility corporations, tobacco corporations, chemical and pharmaceutical corporations, alcohol corporations, banking and other Wall Street corporations, and many others all successfully claimed corporate speech rights to invalidate federal, state, and local laws. As you will see in Chapter Two, corporations even succeeded in attacking the right of parents to know whether the milk they fed their children came from cows treated with Monsanto’s genetically engineered recombinant DNA bovine drug.

In 2007, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center celebrated thirty years of using judicial activism on behalf of corporations and admitted that it was “the brainchild of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.” The brainchild, with its motto of “Business Is Our ONLY Client,” bragged about such “victories” as convincing the Supreme Court to throw out a decision by a jury of people to impose punitive damages for the unlawful conduct of Philip Morris, Inc.

The Consequences

The success of the Powell–Chamber of Commerce plan transformed American law, government, and society, with two devastating consequences for the country. First, corporations gained new political power at the expense of average citizens and voters. Corporations poured out money to lobbying and election campaigns and to help friendly politicians and hurt unfriendly politicians. With even modest reform crushed by corporate rights decisions such as Bellottiv.First National Bank of Boston — andnow much more so, Citizens United — corporationscould threaten “independent expenditure” campaigns against politicians who did not bend their way. Corporate money to influence legislative votes and politician behavior lost its scandalous, shameful nature. Bags of corporate cash were no longer bags of cash; they were “speech.” How could “speech” be corrupt or scandalous?

---

msnbc

...

A new report by the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC), a liberal judicial group, at which msnbc got an exclusive first look, finds that since the start of the Roberts Court in 2005, the Chamber has won more than two-thirds of the cases in which it’s gotten involved. And this term, it has weighed in to support corporate interests in nearly a quarter of the cases heard by the nation’s highest court. Just as important, it’s been more active than any other organization in working to shape the court’s agenda by pushing it to take up favored cases.

“The Chamber is not just winning more cases, they’re participating in more cases,” Doug Kendall, CAC’s founder and president, told msnbc. ”So the impact of their litigation is far beyond what it used to be.”

The major result of the Chamber’s success, legal scholars say, has  been a string of rulings that threaten to block the courthouse door to ordinary Americans looking to hold corporations accountable. And with court-watchers’ attention focused on higher-profile gay marriage and voting rights cases this term, it’s a development that’s flown largely under the radar....

The Justices typically grant around 75 or 80 out of roughly 8,000 petitions submitted. And when they’re deciding which ones, amicus briefs from well-known players like the Chamber offer a “helpful signal” for the court, David L. Franklin, an associate professor at the DePaul College of Law, and the author of a 2009 study of the Chamber’s record at the Roberts Court, told msnbc.

Between May 2009 and August 2012, the business lobby filed 54 amicus briefs at the cert. stage—that is, when the court is considering which cases to take up—far more than any other private organization, SCOTUSblog reported earlier this month. And it succeeded in convincing the Justices to take the case in nearly a third of those instances—a better success rate than that of any other group that filed more than ten briefs.

“They are very much shaping the diet of cases that goes before the Supreme Court each term,” said Kendall. “And then once they get a case before the court they usually win it.”

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And its success rate before the Roberts Court rivals—and this past term has outstripped—that of the solicitor general.

In fact, the NCLC’s roster of wins before the 2010–11 Supreme Court term reads like a top ten list of the corporate world’s efforts to strangle working Americans and maximize profits. Its victories included thwarting class-action claims of gender discrimination at Wal-Mart; forcing individuals to have their claims against big corporations settled in arbitration rather than gaining access to the courts; beating back litigation by states and municipalities seeking to regulate greenhouse gases; defeating claims for damages caused by the defective design of vaccines; limiting recovery by whistleblowers; restricting the reach of US law over foreign manufacturers of defective products; and blocking suits by private citizens against brokerage firms for making false statements about securities.

end coc nclc

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cfact ggl doc driessen

LEGAL FOUNDATIONS

Watt, Dunlop, Gorsuch,  etc started and return after B43 admin

Those same think tanks, funded by the natural resource industries, provided boilerplate legal language for politicians to employ across different states and local governments. Pro-bono legal organizations, like Pacific Legal Foundation and Mountain States Legal Foundation, were funded by the same natural resource companies and would seek out and represent individuals with disputes against the government over takings law. A 1984 Yale Law Journal analysis criticized them for not actually serving the public interest as required for 501(c)(3) designation. More often than not they were found to be serving the interests of their oil and ranching industry board members in lawsuits against environmental regulations.

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{  1973: California Chamber of Commerce created the Pacific Legal Foundation "to practice law on behalf of business interests [by the filing of] lawsuits to block environmental actions and thwart regulations." Coors used this as his model for the Mountain States Legal Foundation in 1976.  Supported by Gov Reagan cabinet, especially Meese.  Reagan made the connection to Scaife.

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The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) was established in 1973-74 by a group of attorneys from California's Justice Department (then under the control of Attorney-General :{_Ed Meese:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"):}:_) to counter reform of the welfare system, and the liberal public interest legal groups that were pressing for better environmental and health regulations.Especially targeted were the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund.

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1976: Coors founded the Mountain States Legal Foundation in 1976 to bring lawsuits designed to enrich giant corporations, limit civil rights, and attack unions, homosexuals and minorities. He also founded the right-wing Heritage Foundation, to provide a philosophical underpinning for the anti-environmental movement.

[PLF's initial financial support came from members of the California Chamber of Commerce and J. Simon Fluor of the Fluor Corporation's oil, nuclear and mineral dollars. Anti-environmental from the start, PLF's early actions supported the use of DDT, the use of herbicides in national forests, and the use of public range land without requiring an environmental impact review. They also supported at least six pro-nuclear power cases before the early eighties while accepting funding from Pacific General Electric (PGE), a utility which has gained a great deal through the development of nuclear power in the Pacific Northwest. In the nineteen-eighties PLF won several cases that are considered land marks by those working on property rights issues today: Nollan v the California Coastal Commission and First Church, both Supreme Court victories which provide precedence for the takings litigation pursued today (Oliver Houck, "With Charity For All," Yale Law Journal, 1993).]

{PLF's environmental law litigation has frequently involved challenges to federal regulation of private property under the :{_Clean Water Act:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffff66;"):}:_ or the :{_Endangered Species Act:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffff66;"):}:_. For example, PLF attorneys represented a Minnesota property owner who was denied the right to build on his property in Contoski v. Scarlett,:{_[6]:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:super;background-color:#ffff66;"):}:_ a case that resulted in the removal of the bald eagle from the endangered species list.}:

<  In 1989, :{_Philip Morris:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_ began funding the organization through its Mission Viejo (gated-community land-development company) subsidiary, mainly because the organisation was active in the property rights area and had won cases limiting the States' ability to expropriate or regulate private property. The Mission Viejo subsidiary was interested in fighting a no-growth initiative which had been blocking some of their development projects. At this stage Philip Morris only gave an annual grant of $5,000 each year, just to keep the organisation on side and available, but it may have also funded specific legal projects.

By 1991 the PLF had a major budget crisis. It was in deficit to the tune of about $1 million, which was about a quarter of its $4 million annual requirements. Not long after, :{_Roy Marden:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_, the Philip Morris executive in charge of maintaining relations with the right-wing think tanks and advocacy institutes, joined the PLF board. Overnight the funding increased substantially to $10,000, and then $22,000 by 1993. Philip Morris also began to utilize the PLF to undertake hidden media and political activities on its behalf.

For instance, it enlisted the organization (together with think-tanks like the :{_Reason Foundation:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_, :{_Hoover Institute:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_, :{_Heritage Foundation:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_ and :{_Claremont Institute:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_) to write op-ed pieces that were planted in newspapers attacking the :{_Environmental Protection Agency:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_ (EPA) over its determination that :{_Environmental Tobacco Smoke:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_ (ETS) was a carcinogen and its attempt to regulate Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). (See page 4 of this planning document.:{_[5]:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_)

At this time Philip Morris was also heavily funded two of PLF's unacknowledged offspring, the :{_National Legal Center for the Public Interest:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_ and the :{_Atlantic Legal Foundation:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_. The :{_Washington Legal Foundation:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_ was another of a similar kind favoured and funded ($200,000) by Philip Morris, but it was independent of the Scaife-funded, PLF-based network. :{_[6]:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_

>

{{It also sloughed off the :{_Center for Applied Jurisprudence:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_ which focused on commercial "free speech issues" (i.e., the right to advertise harmful products) and "regulatory reform." Philip Morris was giving them a $25,000 retainer by this time (and presumably paying also for work done on their behalf).

In 1997-1998 the PLF joined forces with the $10 million funded (by Philip Morris) :{_National Smokers Alliance:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffff66;"):}:_, in a fierce and vindictive legal attack on Professor :{_Stanton Arnold Glantz:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_, a leader of California's main anti-smoking organization, :{_Americans for Nonsmokers Rights:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_:{_[7]:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_ and attempted to brand him in the public mind as having something to hide ... a destroyer of legal document (a ruse the tobacco industry used itself on a massive scale). Glantz had received documents from the early tobacco industry whistleblowers, and he had established the first public-access Internet web site revealing how the industry operated.

}}:

Southeastern Legal Foundation's about page :{_[1]:(style="color:#1155cc;;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:super;background-color:#ffffff;"):}:_ states: "Founded in 1976, Southeastern Legal Foundation is celebrating its 34th year as an national constitutional public interest law firm and policy center that advocates limited government, individual economic freedom, and the free enterprise system in the courts of law and public opinion"

"Mission and Goals: Southeastern Legal Foundation is a public interest law firm which advocates limited government, individual economic freedom, and the free enterprise system. We look for cases in which our involvement can make a difference, not just to the parties involved, but also on the policies or issues that are in dispute."

Failed to overturn Mass v EPA but did get Clinton’s law license revoked (for lying about extrmariatl affair? would this not decimate the ABA ranks?]. Attacked constitutionality of McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill (with K. Starr).

Kivalina: the next tobacco and asbestos, Indigenous subsistence hunters above artic cicle sue foassil fuel companies for sea level rise and loss of ice (with usual hacks).

[Landmark Legal Foundation, one of the earlier conservative legal organizations, was founded in 1976, and initially called the Great Plains Legal Foundation. It was created to address the special interest groups and unions "dedicated to tearing down [individual liberty, free enterprise, and limited government] and advancing Big Government."

Mark Levin is a former employee of the Reagan Administration, and represented former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese during the Iran-Contra investigation. He was a leading advocate of the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and Rush Limbaugh named him head of his (Limbaugh's) "legal division." ]

1977: One of the six regional litigation firms originally established with help of the [Coors funded] National Legal Center for the Public Interest "to oppose government regulation"

1977: (mid-year) The first MSLF President was conservative lawyer and anti-environmentalist James Watt who Coors had met two years before.

1977–80: James Watt in charge of MSLF, wins the gratitude of western conservatives by initiating many lawsuits against high-profile environmental organizations — the EPA, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and Department of the Interior (which he later headed).

   Most of these cases were funded by Coors with additional finance from large oil, mining, agribusiness and electric power industries in the West.

   Ronald Reagan's victory [in Nov 1980] gave the Heritage Foundation and the Mountain States Legal Foundation immeasurable clout.

1983 May 23: National Law Journal article on the growth in right-wing law foundations. It suggests that these are primarily anti-Ralph Nader and says about the MSLF:

And so, in court rooms across the country, firms like the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the Pacific Legal Foundation represent clients that they believe are seldom spoken for: businessmen, crime victims, private property holders.

   They fight for corporate free speech, government deregulation and states rights. They publish monographs on judicial activism and sponsor seminars on alternatives to rules of strict product liability.

   Funded bv such conservative concerns as the Southern Pacific Co. and the Scaife Foundation, as well as by sympathetic individuals, these groups are acutely aware that they are emulating their ideological adversaries in such "traditional" — or liberal — public interest firms as the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc.

…

1988 March: The MSLF ws of the founders of the Wise-Use coalition [Organised by Alan Gottleib and Ron Arnold, together with the Moonies and Christian Voice]

1988: The Wise Use movement combines a legal strategy with political organizing. The legal front was already covered by right-wing legal foundations like California'sPacific Legal Foundation , [James] Watt's Mountain States Legal Foundation and Jeannette Burrage's Northwest Legal Foundation .

}

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The Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), a non-profit conservative legal foundation, was founded in 1976 with initial funding of $250,000. from Joseph Coors.James Watt, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan, served as MSLF's founding president; William Perry Pendley currently serves as president and chief legal officer of the group.

MSLF files cases and amicus curiae briefs attacking environmental protections and designations on behalf of oil, mineral, development and timber interests. MSLF is active in the "wise use" and property rights movement. Over the past two decades, MSLF has served as a training ground for a number of attorneys most active in the anti-environmental movement.

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Before working for the Reagan administration, Norton was hired by James Watt at the arch-conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation, which often represents loggers, miners, ranchers and water developers in fights against environmental safeguards. Watt was later ousted as President Reagan's Interior Secretary for his extremist agenda.

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