Institute for Legal Reform

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The US Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) is one of the various departments of the US Chamber of Commerce that was founded in 1998 to address the country's growing number of litigations. ILR advocates comprehensive reforms, not only through changing the laws, but also by changing the legal culture and the legislators and judges that create that culture.

The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform is a national campaign, representing the nation's business community, with the critical mission of making America's legal system simpler, fairer, faster.

ILR's mission and goals:

Neutralize plaintiff trial lawyers' excessive influence over the legal and political systems.
Ensure enactment of common sense legal reform and related legislation.
Create and maintain public support for legal reform, including building alliances with groups and organizations to advance the legal reform agenda.
Reform the class action system to make it simpler, fairer and faster.
Enact common sense reforms to ensure fairness in liability suits.
Ensure damage awards are fair and equitable.
Eliminate frivolous lawsuits.
Enforce legal ethics rules.

The 2006 State Liability Systems Ranking Study was conducted for the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform by Harris Interactive among a national sample of in-house general counsel or other senior corporate litigators to explore how reasonable and fair the tort liability system is perceived to be by U.S. business. The 2006 ranking builds on previous years’ work in 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2002 where each year all 50 states are ranked by those familiar with the litigation environment in each state. Prior to these rankings, information regarding the attitudes of the business world towards the legal systems in each of the states had been largely anecdotal. The State Liability Systems Ranking Study aims to quantify how corporate attorneys view the state systems. Respondents were first screened for their familiarity with states, and those who were very or somewhat familiar with the litigation environment in a given state were then asked to evaluate that state. It is important to remember that courts and localities within a state may vary a great deal in fairness and efficiency. However, respondents had to evaluate the state as a whole. Respondents were asked to give states a grade (“A”, “B”, “C”, “D” or “F”) in each of the following areas: having and enforcing meaningful venue requirements; overall treatment of tort and contract litigation; treatment of class action suits and mass consolidation suits; punitive damages; timeliness of summary judgment or dismissal; discovery; scientific and technical evidence; noneconomic damages; judges’ impartiality and competence; and juries’ predictability and fairness. These grades were combined to create an overall ranking of state liability systems. According to the U.S. businesses surveyed, the states doing the best job of creating a fair and reasonable litigation environment are Delaware, Nebraska, Virginia, Iowa and Connecticut. The bottom five states today are West Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Hawaii.

Critics of "tort reform" organizations like ILR argue that the organizations serve to protect the interests of corporations by limiting the access of ordinary citizens to be compensated by harms done to them by corporations through faulty products and/or harmful services. The point, critics argue, is not to promote judicial efficiency, legal ethics, or any other public purpose, but merely to protect corporations from the consequences of their misdeeds. The United States Chamber of Commerce which funds this campaign is a not for profit organization funded by tens of thousands of business interests. Their official positions on issues from drilling in ANWAR to union rights are primarily in line with the Republican Party. These positions are often opposed to groups that have traditionally made up the democratic party's base such as union members and, in this instance, trial lawyers.