Posted on 7/7/2007, 5:25:29 PM by republicpictures
THE SEATTLE school integration case decided by the Supreme Court last month was brought in the name of a group called Parents Involved in Community Schools on behalf of Jill Kurfirst and her ninth-grade son. But it was a little-known, Sacramento-based organization called the Pacific Legal Foundation — a conservative public interest law firm involved in the case from the beginning — that developed many of the legal arguments five justices ultimately found persuasive.
Where did the foundation come from? The story begins with former Justice Lewis F. Powell. Shortly before he was nominated to the court in 1971, Powell, then a Virginia lawyer, wrote a memo to a friend at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System." In it, Powell worried that liberal groups had nurtured specialist lawyers and developed litigation strategies to defend government regulation. Businesses, he argued, were suffering because they had a "disposition to appease" and weren't able to present a countervailing view of what constituted the public interest.
Powell's memo prodded the business community to help create a number of not-for-profit law firms devoted to arguing a conservative point of view. Ronald Zumbrun and Raymond Momboise, former advisors to California Gov. Ronald Reagan, founded the first one — the Pacific Legal Foundation — in 1973. On its website today, the foundation says it exists to fight "tyranny" engendered by "overzealous bureaucracies and government red tape" and that it is a foe of "government regulators and environmental extremists." Other issue areas: fighting racial preferences, combating eminent domain laws and encouraging government to take economic impact into account when designating critical habitat for endangered species.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Translation: “Don’t worry, readers, the liberal juggernaut will prevail.”
Nonetheless, if you interpret for yourself, it’s an interesting read.
“On its website today, the foundation says it exists to fight “tyranny” engendered by “overzealous bureaucracies and government red tape” and that it is a foe of “government regulators and environmental extremists.” Other issue areas: fighting racial preferences, combating eminent domain laws and encouraging government to take economic impact into account when designating critical habitat for endangered species.”
This is bad why?????
Beats me.
From the property rights perspective, Pacific Legal is a great organization. There are so many regulations on land use and Pacific Legal is limited by financing on what cases to take.
One I would like to see them take on is the presumption of environmental harm unless the landowner can prove otherwise.
Traditonally, there is a presumption of the right to use of property and a standard of proximate cause to prove substantial public injury in an enforcement effort. The government can absolutely prohibit use that it deems substantially injurious to public health and safety - and as of late - public trust resources. It can also “conditionally permit” these injurious uses with conditions to avoid, minimize and mitigate the injury.
The federal endangered species is written in a weasley way. The landowner has to determine if his activities will “take” a listed species. If he determines it will, then he can apply for an incidental “take” permit where the l;andowner proposes the terms which are then negotiatied until he comes up with something satisfactory to the agency. (Doesn’t this sound alarms as to whether the agency really has a right to permit?)
A new California Assembly bill, AB 1032, (state Senate hearing next Tuesday) presumes that suction dredging is bad for fish and wildlife unless the mining claim owner can prove that it isn’t. This shifts the burden of proof of harm to the user. The sufficiency of prrof would be determined by the Fish and Game Commission. (Talk about an opening for “arbitrary and capriciuous” government action.) This is designed so the agency can avoid claims that it has physically taken the claim through regulation and must pay just compensation. It is really, really weasley. As a precident, it should make every one alarmed
What this reporter meant to write was that Pacific Legal Foundation is a charity that in my little corner of the world I knew nothing about. Happy to be of help.
Congressman Billybob
Pacific Legal Foundation has done a lot of work for the Boy Scouts, trying to keep their private organization a private organization.
Yes, that seems to be Tushnet’s point: that PLF is a paper tiger because liberals (like segregationists 50 years ago) know how to minimize the impact of Supreme Court decisions by resisting at the local level — resistance he claims PLF can’t or won’t fight. It would be interesting to hear from an informed person about whether this rap on PLF is accurate or not.
Good for you. But you should also have reported them.
Everybody that knows me has been alarmed to death! They have been alarmed so repeatedly that they now sigh in relief that the danged dinger has fallen outa my alarm bell!!! Ha Ha ha!!!
They feel fully justified in being weasley for wildlife! They're on the side of right, providing affirmative action for fish and plants and especially... Welfare for Wildlife!!!
All you dumb American mortal humans can just go suck canal water as far as these GovernMental EnvironMentalistas are concerned!!!
There are some really GOOD people in this organization!!!
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