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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.

About Ted Frank

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.”

Zombie Litigation

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.

Published Friday, April 04, 2008 10:59 AM by Ted Frank

© American Enterprise Institute Legal Center for the Public Interest. All rights reserved.

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