FULL COURT PRESS

...Americans are the world's most litigious people...

...In the fall of 1979, PLF established a College of Public Interest Law to train law graduates in its brand of legal advocacy during one- or two-year fellowships in Sacramento and Washington...

...Forty years ago, the Left thought law was decidedly one-dimensional: Like the state, law was seen simply as an instrument of class domination...

...All are affiliated with the National Legal Center for the Public Interest in Washington, a New Right legal think tank which assists them with research and case coordination...

...The PLF dug an obscure provision out of the state constitution, saying it gave There is no question that the Pacific Legal Foundation has become a heavy counterweight to its liberal rivals...

...What they cannot achieve legally, the new breed of public-interest advocates may ultimately attain politically...

...Zumbrun's troops have also attacked labor rights boldly, if not always successfully...

...Of the many lawsuits legal aid attorneys brought against the 1971 Act, Zumbrun lost more than half...

...For them, it's a bargain...

...Zumbrun became the corporation's president, while Si Fluor, chairman of the Fluor Company, the international petrochemical and engineering conglomerate, headed the first board of trustees...

...Defending his handiwork made Zumbrun a true believer in the power of public-interest law firms: They had a way of thrashing him in court...

...Even if the LSC survives this year's budgetary assault, its troubles will continue...

...At the same time (in 1964), the Federal Government began to underwrite a nationwide program of free legal aid for the indigent...

...Compared to this, the coffers of liberal public-interest firms are minuscule and could dwindle even more under a hostile Federal Administration...

...Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, this new understanding was put to work on behalf of the disfranchised...

...According to Gnaizda, U.S...

...Certainly, PLF stands to benefit if Reagan carries out his threat to abolish the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), which funds local legal aid programs nationally...

...Like Reagan's current Federal policies, California's 1971 omnibus Welfare Reform Act cut or cut off benefits for students, the working poor, pregnant women, and others...

...The story of PLF's "blue butterfly" case may have its twists, but as an example of what is meant by "public-interest law," it is clear and penetrating...

...If the Left once thought the judicial system inflexible, the public interest groups demonstrated that the courts could be arenas of political conflict, where the interests of the underprivileged might occasionally prevail...

...But lawyers for the public-interest firm stepped in and out-conserved the Government conservationists: They argued that endangered brown pelicans and gray whales lived on sea creatures that fed on the sludge, and that the new plant would make a shambles of the rare El Segundo blue butterfly's natural habitat...

...Its offspring include Washington's Capital Legal Foundation...

...In the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Right has found an able standardbearer...

...Such older liberal legal institutions as the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund breathed new life...

...Conservative nonprofit legal foundations now operate in eight cities across the country...

...It was a nimble interpretive leap on the lawyers' part: They had actually turned the Endangered Species Act against the EPA, effectively weakening and embarrassing the Agency...

...And the ironies of the case do not end there...

...Great Plains Legal Foundation in Kansas City...

...In one, it sought to overturn California requirements for jobless benefits, calling them too lenient...

...During his first year in the White House, Reagan took up his vendetta once more, proposing zero funding for the LSC...

...The full effect of PLF's litigation is difficult to measure...

...As Ralph Gnaizda sums up the situation, "True public-interest firms represent the unrepresented...

...In our view, liberty and property equate," Zumbrun asserts...

...The Foundation has also served as a model for conservative public-interest law firms in other parts of the country...

...Besides its home base in Sacramento, it runs a litigation office in Washington, a research office in Los Angeles, and liaison offices staffed by volunteers in San Diego and Anchorage...

...There is no question, however, that PLF has become a sophisticated counterweight to its liberal public-interest rivals...

...Collectively, the lawyers and organizations involved in this process came to be known as the public-interest law movement...

...The Pacific Legal Foundation represents the business view, which is already fully expressed by big, well-financed corporations...

...Once in charge of legal aid, the Reagan-ites would be in a good position to pull the rug out from under their public interest adversaries without ever setting foot in court...

...A wide range of smaller, tax-exempt, nonprofit law firms—Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Litigation Group, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Women's Law Fund of Cleveland, the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles—cropped up...

...While Zum-brun boasts a success rate of 80 per cent, many informed members of the legal community discount the claim...

...A graduate of the University of California's prestigious Boalt Law School in Berkeley, Zumbrun served as deputy director for legal affairs of the Department of Social Welfare during Reagan's eight years as governor...

...Since 1973, the PLF has swelled to a staff of forty-five, including eighteen full-time lawyers...

...the Mid-Atlantic Legal Foundation in Philadelphia...

...The EPA had ordered Los Angeles to build a $250 million sewage treatment plant and stop dumping its sludge into the Pacific...

...Lifting techniques developed by their liberal counterparts, they pursue environmental, social, and economic litigation that favors private enterprise and "traditional" American values...

...Many of our cases involve the rights of people to do what they want with their own property...

...BY BILL BLUM AND GINA LOBACO Blue butterflies, gray whales, and brown pelicans all had their day in court in 1979, when a California public-interest law firm took on the Environmental Protection Agency...

...They point out that PLF participates only as an amicus curiae (friend of the court) in a third of its cases...

...According to a PLF financial statement, the non-profit organization has received tax-deductible donations from a number of sources: 56 per cent of the contributions come from trade associations and charitable foundations such as the Carthage and Sarah Scaife Foundation (trusts for the Mellon fortune), the Lilly Endowment, and the William Hearst Foundation...

...With the endorsement of the California Chamber of Commerce, PLF set up shop...

...The Foundation has filed twenty cases against the UFW...

...He was the author and chief legal advocate of a sweeping overhaul of the state's welfare programs...

...In all likelihood, the new appointees will discourage class-action litigation, lobbying on behalf of low-income clients, and lawsuits against the Government...

...Reagan adviser Ed Meese and Hoover Institution director Glenn Campbell sit on the College's Board of Advisers...

...Their prototype and undisputed leader is the Pacific Legal Foundation...

...To date, it has scored two victories, one ordering reinstatement of thirteen who reported to the fields during a strike and another outlawing picketing outside the homes of strikebreakers...

...Its courtroom successes show how pernicious a role the law can play on social issues...

...The notion that government should subsidize discrete segments of the bar for ideological purposes is unjustified and dangerous," he told the National Journal...

...Some three-fourths of its cases deal with environmental, land-use, and energy issues, and it is here that PLF shines brightest...

...Privately funded programs would continue, but the initiative would pass to the PLF and its progeny...

...PLF screens its yearly caseload of more than 100 lawsuits to fit that ideological perspective...

...Its courtroom successes show how pernicious a role the law can play on social issues The PLF has also made great sport of taking on the United Farm Workers (UFW), although its record with the union has not been much to brag about...

...A Federal district judge agreed and ordered work on the plant halted...

...Many got start-up money from charitable institutions...

...The PLF convinced a Federal court to invalidate the law, ending a statewide moratorium on nuclear plant construction and dealing the anti-nuke movement a jarring blow...

...Other PLF efforts have hit labor even harder...

...Among Reagan's appointees to its board of directors was PLF trustee William Harvey...

...Last year, the Foundation lost two controversial labor law decisions before the California supreme court...

...Besides flailing away at labor and envi-ronmentalism, PLF has unsuccessfully challenged rent control ordinances in Berkeley and Santa Monica and has sought to block efforts by a number of California municipalities to levy new taxes in the wake of the Proposition 13 debacle...

...Ultimately, what is at stake is the way we, as a nation, define the public interest...

...One of its biggest victories came in 1979: Until then, a California law had prohibited certification of nuclear power plants until Federal energy authorities approved some new means of waste disposal...

...But beginning with the New Deal and continuing through the McCarthy and civil rights eras, movement attorneys learned to use the courts to advance social causes, defend civil liberties, and bring about reforms...

...Attorney General William French Smith's old law firm, the Los Angeles-based 300-attorney megalith of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, also has a representative on the board...

...Although Zumbrun describes PLF's objectives as the restoration of "common sense" and "balance" in public policy, PLF's legal work tilts sharply to the Right...

...The inspectors must now get search warrants before looking in on businesses for safety violations...

...It made do with a staff of four...

...The judicial process has become a central feature of our political culture, and understanding the process is slowly becoming one of the major theoretical tasks facing the Left...

...The second case challenged California's Employer-Employee Relations Act, which governs collective bargaining between the state and its approximately 250,000 employees...

...In 1979, for example, it succeeded in outlawing routine inspections by California's Occupational Safety and Health Administration...

...In effect, the PLF attempted to outlaw trade unions for state workers...

...Dan Brun-ner, who succeeded Zumbrun when Jerry Brown was elected governor, says the new administration inherited "a disaster of losing litigation" and had to pay millions of dollars retroactively to people improperly denied benefits...

...The Right takes to the law Unfortunately, the public-interest field is no longer the private preserve of the progressives...

...The Office of Management and Budget has proposed a scheme to further cramp the public-interest movement's style: In the past, parties that sued the Government were sometimes awarded legal fees, but OMB special counsel Michael Horowitz finds that irksome, and has proposed restrictions on such funding...

...The lesson was not lost on Zumbrun...

...In other environmental skirmishes, PLF has won court orders allowing construction of a Trident missile submarine base in Washington state, permitting the Concorde supersonic transport to land at Dulles airport near Washington, D.C., and keeping the Department of the Interior from setting 160-acre limits on California farms that receive Federal money for irrigation...

...In the mid-1970s,'American conservatives decided to practice their own brand of public-interest law...

...If the Legal Services Corporation lost its fundings, the cause of public-interest law would be seriously set back...

...As governor of California, Reagan developed a deep enmity for legal services: In the early 1970s he tried unsuccessfully to shut down a state program that had challenged his welfare overhaul...

...PLF contributed little to either case, yet it numbers each among its Supreme Court decisions and cites Bakke (which disapproved of racial quotas in education) as one of its major achievements...

...31 per cent comes from wealthy individuals and corporations like SAFECO, Texaco, Arco, and the Southern Pacific Company...

...PLF proudly describes these rulings as triumphs for individual rights...

...They shared an uncommon willingness to deliver legal services to those otherwise denied them...

...PLF wanted them to look farther afield as well...

...And, of course, all are closely tied to the Reagan Administration and the New Right in general...

...Eventually, the progressive community began to understand the law's paradoxical character—they saw that it could be a tool of social control and a channel for social progress...

...It has chosen its lawsuits skillfully to lend the strongest hand possible to the tasks on the New Right's political agenda...

...The public-interest law firm, the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal FoundaBill Blum is a lawyer and writer and Gina Lobaco is a Los Angeles writer who contributes regularly to In These Times...

...We felt there was an absence of a voice before the judiciary," Zumbrun says today, "and we felt we'd try to fill the gap and argue and advocate in support of free enterprise, private property rights, concepts of limited government, and the belief that there should be a balance between economic, social, and environmental considerations when resolving major public-interest issues...

...And the influence of PLF extends far beyond its own litigation...

...He and several close associates decided the Right had to emulate the Left in the legal arena...

...As an amicus, it plays little more than a supporting role, filing a minor supplemental brief on behalf of one of the major parties to a lawsuit...

...corporations spend $24 billion a year on legal fees, half of it tax-deductible as a business expense...

...Should that happen, the very concept of public-interest law would be stood on its head...

...As Ralph Gnaizda, executive director of the liberal San Francisco-based Public Advocates explains, "Companies find it easier in some instances to contribute $30,000 to PLF . . . than spend millions on corporate counsel...

...The act also set up workfare programs and established residency requirements...

...exclusive authority to set employee salaries to the state personnel board...

...Each year we file almost 100 million lawsuits against one another, corporations, and government agencies...

...From the beginning, PLF's board of trustees has consisted of a Who's Who of corporate California...

...Supreme Court...

...The state requires claimants to seek work at local unemployment offices...

...Mid-American Legal Foundation in Chicago, and Southeastern Legal Foundation in Atlanta...

...Much of what we now take for granted as basic rights for consumers, renters, the handicapped, and the unemployed and others was brought about by the movement...

...After a long struggle and a 25 per cent cut, the LSC received funding through June...

...tion (PLF), had, in fact, litigated against the Endangered Species Act on several previous occasions...

...The PLF was founded in 1973 by Ronald "Woody" Zumbrun, a friend and political crony of Ronald Reagan...

...Its two best-known amicus appearances came in the Bakke and Weber cases, in which it opposed affirmative action before the U.S...

...A co-founder of PLF with Zum-brun, Harvey was elected board chairman in early March...

...Like PLF, the newcomers enjoy tax-exempt status and the generous support of corporations and such right-wing philanthropists as Joseph Coors and Richard Mellon Scaife...

...Among its current members are the presidents and chairmen of the SAFECO Insurance Corp., the Knudsen Corp., the Southern Pacific Co., the Venus Oil Co., and San Diego Federal Savings & Loan...

...The overriding goal of the New Right is to reshape that concept to fit the gospel according to Reagan: the belief that the business of America is business...

...As dean of the Indiana University Law School, Harvey vetoed plans for a student legal aid clinic to have been funded by the LSC...

...With Harvey at the helm of the LSC board, the poor will have their own James Watt...

...the Ford Foundation, for instance, poured more than $25 million into the public-interest cause in the 1970s...

...At a time when many liberal public-interest law firms are being hit hard by the recession and withdrawal of Ford Foundation money, PLF is sound and growing...