|
|
|
Fighting the
Good Fight
Institute for Justice doesn't mind using ‘good' causes to promote ‘evil' ends
|
Business New Haven
2/22/1999
By: Laurence D. Cohen
|
Clint Bolick, litigation director for the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice, came to the state Capitol and the Yale Law School earlier this month with his typically sunny disposition and his always-subversive message: Minorities that look to government to legislate away their problems are looking to the enemy.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian-flavored “public interest” litigation factory in Washington, was founded by a group of Reagan-era Justice Department lawyers who never saw a government regulation that didn't cause mischief and unintended consequences.
No matter how seemingly mundane or how bleeding-heart compassionate a particular government regulation or law might appear to be on the surface, the boys and girls at the Institute find that when government mucks around, freedom and liberty suffer - and the nation is worse off as a result.
And unlike the peculiar people who seem to be running the national Republican Party these days, the Institute for Justice has an exquisite sense of public relations - an ability to personalize and communicate “conservative” issues in a way that doesn't scare folks half to death.
Above all else, the Institute lusts after minority victims - blacks and Hispanics and Asians who attempt to live the American Dream but run up against government that pretends to help, but thwarts them at every turn.
Are you a black woman who wants to open a beauty shop that specializes in braiding black women's hair? If the state requires you to endure hundreds of hours of training to learn how to caress long, golden-flowing locks, the Institute will challenge the licensing requirement.
Are you a Puetro Rican man who wants to launch a taxi service, but local regulations discourage new entrants into the business? The Institute will provide you with a lawyer.
Are you a minority building contractor who is willing to underbid the good-ol'-white boy building trades to win a contract, but is prevented by “prevailing wage” laws from competing on price? You've got yourself an attorney who will argue that the original Davis-Bacon Act prevailing-wage law was passed expressly to discourage southern blacks from moving north and winning construction jobs from white firms.
You get the idea. Is some of this affection for minority clients a public-relations ploy? What difference does it make? The rich folks, the well-connected white folks, have come to an accommodation with unnecessary government regulation: They buy access, they modify restrictions to suit their interests. The poor, the minorities, are excluded from the game.
The Institute in general, and Clint Bolick in particular, have guaranteed their place in history with a litigation explosion in defense of school choice, of vouchers or tax credits designed to liberate poor families from the horror of compulsory attendance at lousy urban public schools that don't work.
In Milwaukee, in Cleveland, in Vermont, in Maine, in Arizona, in Chicago, Institute lawyers led by Bolick have fought the good fight, defending or advocating “choice” plans opposed by status-quo liberals who pretend to harbor compassion for minorities - as long as they don't have to go to school with them.
In his speeches to friendly meetings of the Federalist Society (conservative and libertarian lawyers who sit around in powdered wigs, reading the Federalist papers under a back-lit portrait of Alexander Hamilton), Bolick stripped the issue of its legal intricacies and got to the heart of the matter: Why should Bill and Hillary Clinton be the only residents of public housing who get to send their kid to private school?
Would Connecticut schools, laboring under a desegregation lawsuit “victory” that requires the state to improve quality and reduce “racial isolation,” benefit from a full-blown voucher program? Bolick believes that vouchers would be an effective tool to empower families to seek out a better education for their children, without necessarily doing much to guarantee that black kids would somehow be plopped down next to white kids in a classroom.
That may be enough for many urban parents who are increasingly angry at the glacial pace of school “reform.” BNH
Laurence D. Cohen is a senior fellow at the Yankee Institute for Public Policy.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
