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The AEI Legal Center for
the Public Interest, formerly known as the National Legal Center for the
Public Interest, was founded in 1975 to foster knowledge about law and the
administration of justice, especially with respect to individual rights, free
enterprise, property ownership, limited government, and a fair and efficient
judiciary.
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Ted Frank is a resident fellow at AEI and director of the AEI Legal Center for the Public Interest, where he manages the Institute’s research in legal studies. Before joining AEI, Mr. Frank was a litigator from 1995 to 2005. He has written for law reviews, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and National Review Online. Mr. Frank clerked for Judge Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He writes for the award-winning legal reform blogs Point of Law and Overlawyered, and the Wall Street Journal has called him a “leading tort-reform advocate.”
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My latest
Liability Outlook examines the problems of retroactive
lawmaking and litigation, especially reviver
statutes: The controversy over whether and how to seat
the Michigan and Florida delegations at the Democratic National
Convention shows the danger of changing rules midstream and upsetting
settled expectations. Reviver statutes not only obviate statutes of
limitations, which are a critical aid to justice, by "reviving" claims
that have expired or never existed, but they can also pose the danger
of undoing the benefits of future prospective legislation. In
evaluating laws, the issue is not merely one of retroactivity, but of
the importance of promoting legal certainty. For example, the FISA
Amendments Act, S. 2248, while ostensibly acting retroactively to grant
immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush
administration's antiterror surveillance program, works to protect
settled expectations. Among
matters discussed: litigation against the Catholic church over
allegations of child abuse and the Michigan legislature's proposed
retroactive repeal of pharmaceutical tort reform in H.R. 4045.
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