NADER, RALPH

Considered the father of the consumer protection movement, Ralph Nader has had a great effect on U.S. law and public policy of the late twentieth century. Nader's advocacy on behalf of consumers and workers hastened into reality many features of the contemporary political landscape. The work of this lawyer and irrepressible gadfly of the powers that be, which began in the mid-1960s, has led to the passage of numerous consumer-protection laws in such areas as automobiles, mining, insurance, gas pipelines, and meatpacking, as well as the creation of government agencies such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the environmental protection agency, and the consumer product safety commission. Nader himself has founded many well-known consumer advocacy groups, including the Public Interest Research Group, the Clean Water Action Project, the Center for Auto Safety, and the Project on Corporate Responsibility. His goal in these efforts, he has said, is "nothing less than the qualitative reform of the industrial revolution."

Nader was born February 27, 1934, in Winsted, Connecticut, to Nadra Nader and Rose Bouziane Nader, Lebanese immigrants who owned and operated a restaurant and bakery. He is the youngest of five children. He attended the Gilbert School and Princeton University on scholarships. At Princeton, he entered the woodrow wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1955. During an era of conformity, his challenges to school authorities and procedures at Princeton made him stand out. At one point, he protested the use of the poisonous insecticide dichlorodipehnyl-trichloroethane (DDT) on campus trees.

"The most important office in America for anyone to achieve is full-time citizen."
—Ralph Nader

After Princeton, Nader attended Harvard Law School, where he edited the Harvard Law Record, and graduated with distinction in 1958.

It was at Harvard that he first became interested in auto safety. After studying auto-injury cases, in 1958 he published his first article on the subject, "American Cars: Designed for Death," in the Harvard Law Record. It contained a thesis that he would bring to national attention in the mid-1960s: Auto fatalities result not just from driver error, as the auto industry had maintained, but also from poor vehicle design. Nader followed his law degree with six months of service in the Army and then a period of personal travel through Latin America, Europe, and Africa. Upon his return, he established a private law practice in Hartford, Connecticut created an informal legal aid society, and lectured from 1961 to 1963 at the University of Hartford.

Having worked at the local level for auto-safety regulations in the years subsequent to his graduation from Harvard, Nader decided to go to Washington, D.C., in 1964, where he hoped to have more influence. Through his friendship with Daniel P. Moynihan, who then was serving as assistant secretary of labor, Nader worked as a consultant at the department of labor and wrote a study that called for federal responsibility over auto safety.

Nader left the Department of Labor in May 1965 and devoted himself to completing what would become his most celebrated book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile. The book was published later that year and quickly became a best-seller. In it, Nader painted a grim picture of motor vehicle injuries and fatalities, noting that 47,700 people were killed in auto accidents in 1964. He made an eloquent appeal for federal car-safety standards that would both prevent accidents from occurring and better protect passengers in the event of an accident. The book also communicated a philosophy regarding public regulation of technology that would cause him to do battle on many other issues. "A great problem of contemporary life," he wrote, "is how to control the power of economic interests which ignore the harmful effects of their applied science and technology." Nader has devoted his life to solving this problem.

Taking some of his inspiration from the civil rights movement, Nader stood up to the

most powerful companies in the world. His book targeted the safety problems of the Chevrolet Corvair, a product of the world's largest company, General Motors (GM). He convincingly marshaled evidence that the driver could lose control of the Corvair even when it was moving slowly, thus making it "unsafe at any speed." The Goliath GM did not take kindly to the stones thrown by this David, and the company began a campaign of harassment and intimidation that was intended to abort Nader's efforts. Subsequent congressional committee hearings in 1966 revealed that GM's campaign against Nader had involved harassing phone calls and attempts to lure Nader into compromising situations with women. The company formally apologized before Congress for these tactics.

Many politicians in Washington, D.C., and many Americans were receptive to Nader's ideas. In 1966, in his State of the Union address, President lyndon b. johnson called for a national highway safety act. Later that year, Congress passed the Highway Safety Act (80 Stat. 731 [23 U.S.C.A. § 401 note]) and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (80 Stat. 718 [15 U.S.C.A. § 1381 note]). The latter created a new government body, later named the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that oversaw the creation of federal safety standards for automobiles and was also empowered to authorize recalls of unsafe vehicles. In subsequent years, these laws and others for which Nader had advocated helped to bring about a marked decrease in traffic fatalities per vehicle mile. As the Washington Post exclaimed, on August 30, 1966, "[A] one-man lobby for the public prevailed over the nation's most powerful industry."

Nader's first work in the area of auto safety remains his most famous consumer advocacy. However, he has remained a tireless proponent of consumers' and workers' rights on many different fronts. Shortly after his triumph with auto regulation, Nader initiated a publicity campaign that helped to pass the Wholesome Meat Act, 81 Stat. 584, 19 U.S.C.A. 1306 (1967), which established stricter federal guidelines for meatpacking plants. By the late 1960s, he began to mobilize college students who joined him in his investigations of public policy and the effectiveness of government regulations. These young forces came to be called "Nader's Raiders," and many of them eventually rose to positions of influence in the government and in public policy organizations. By the mid-1970s, the various groups that Nader had created, including Public Interest Research Groups in many states, were doing research and financing legal action in relation to myriad public policy issues, including tax reform, consumer-product safety, and corporate responsibility.

During Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s, Nader's influence in Washington, D.C., declined, particularly as the Reagan administration dismantled much of the government regulation that Nader had helped to establish. He did not give up his cause, however. In the late 1980s, he was again in the media spotlight, this time through his attempts to lower car-insurance rates in California and to block a proposed congressional pay increase. During the 1980s and 1990s, he also addressed the savings-and-loan bailout problem, well before it became high on the nation's agenda; opposed the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which damage the ozone layer; and worked to prevent limitations on damages that consumers may receive from corporations through civil lawsuits.

Nader has run for president three times, including the 1992, 1996, and 2000 elections. In 1992, he entered the race as a write-in candidate. Four years later, he was nominated as a candidate by the green party, which has its strongest support in California. With political activist Winona LaDuke as his running mate, he ran a no-frills campaign, accepting no taxpayer money, eschewing advertising, and often traveling alone. He earned 684,902 votes that year, including two percent of the votes in California.

Nader ran again in the 2000 election. He raised more than $8 million for the campaign, some $30 million less than reform party candidate pat buchanan. Running again with LaDuke, Nader finished third in the election, with 2,882,955 votes, while Buchanan finished with 448,895. Several supporters have urged Nader to run again in the 2004 election.

Nader has written and edited dozens of books during his career, including Crashing the Party, which details his run during the 2000 presidential election. Other books include The Consumer and Corporate Accountability (1973), Corporate Power in America (1973), Working on the System: A Comprehensive Manual for Citizen Access to Federal Agencies (1974), Government Regulation: What Kind of Reform? (1976), The Big Boys: Power and Position in American Business (1986), and Collision Course: The Truthabout Airline Safety (1994). He also has founded or helped to found a number of consumer and other advocacy organizations.

further readings

Herrnson, Paul S., and John C. Green, eds. 1998. Multiparty Politics in America. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Little-field.

Martin, Justin. 2002. Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus.

Nader, Ralph. 2002. Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press.

——. 2000. The Ralph Nader Reader. New York: Seven Stories Press.

——. 1972. Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile. Rev. ed. New York: Grossman.

Nader, Ralph, and Wesley J. Smith. 1996. No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America. New York: Random House.

cross-references

Green Party.

Ralph Nader

The American social crusader and lawyer Ralph Nader (born 1934) became a symbol of the public's concern over corporate ethics and consumer interests. He inspired investigations that were intended to improve the operations of industries and government bureaus.

Ralph Nader was born on February 27, 1934, in Winsted, Connecticut, to Lebanese immigrants. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1955 and then went to Harvard Law School, receiving his degree in 1958. Nader served briefly in the U.S. Army, traveled, then opened a law office in Hartford, Connecticut. He also lectured in history and government at the University of Hartford.

Nader was one among many concerned for safety in auto design, but most writers and members of safety and auto associations saw the problem as one in engineering and individual preference in a consumers' market. Nader, while still at Harvard, had studied auto injury cases and was persuaded that faulty design, rather than driver incompetence, was responsible for the staggering accident statistics. He testified before state legislative committees on the subject and wrote articles for magazines.

In 1964 Nader was appointed a consultant to the Department of Labor and undertook to study auto safety in depth. He also worked with Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff's Government Operations Subcommittee, providing it with data on auto accidents. In 1965 he left the department to prepare a book on the subject.

Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile (1965) appeared while Ribicoff's committee was holding hearings on the subject. Nader, a tall, attractive figure, testifying before the committee, became a target of auto manufacturers then coping with lawsuits by victims of auto accidents who were charging faulty car design. Although new safety laws were inevitable, their character was given new facets by Nader's revelations that he had been personally harassed and his private life investigated by detectives. The admission in March 1966 by General Motors president James M. Roche that his firm had indeed had Nader under surveillance received national television coverage and made Nader a public figure. Unsafe at Any Speed became a best seller and a factor in the legislation which in September became law.

Nader enlarged his investigations of the auto industry and the National Traffic Safety Agency, which was responsible for administering the new law. In November he sued General Motors for $26 million, alleging invasion of privacy. He also began a series of studies in various fields intended to upgrade responsible industrial production and human relations. These included safety in mines, control of oil and gas pipes dangerous to people and the environment, and justice for Native Americans. One cause which harked back to Upton Sinclair's 1905-1906 crusade was Nader's activity in behalf of what became the 1967 Wholesome Meat Act.

Living austerely, working with swiftness and economy, and supplementing with foundation grants his income from royalties, article writing, and lectures, Nader attracted over a hundred young people—soon known as "Nader's Raiders"—from law schools and elsewhere. They helped him gather data about industries and government bureaus. In 1969 he organized his Center for the Study of Responsive Law. Its work resulted in such publications as "The Nader Report" on the Federal Trade Commission (1969) and The Interstate Commerce Commission [sic]: The Public Interest and the ICC (1970), with more publications promised in all social fields. In August 1970 Nader was once more in the headlines, having been awarded $425,000 from General Motors, funds promptly put into his expanded crusade.

From the late 1970s through the early 1990s, Nader's public image faded from his Unsafe at Any Speed heyday. But by 1988, he successfully campaigned to roll back California car insurance rates, then ignited public opinion to block a proposed 50 percent pay hike for members of Congress.

He gained notoriety in 1990 when a Forbes magazine story accused him of working together with trial lawyers for supporting Americans' right to sue. The criticism didn't deter him from other investigations, including safety flaws in the airline industry because of financial instability following deregulation. But his book, Collision Course: The Truth About Airline Safety, with Wesley J. Smith, was panned by some for questionable use of statistics.

After failing to stop the North American Free Trade Agreement (1993), he was nominated as 1996 Green Party candidate for President, winning some support in popular polls. Nader himself had summed up his philosophy: "You've got to keep the pressure on, even if you lose. The essence of the citizens' movement is persistence."

Nader and his coworkers were patently in the Progressive tradition. However, their precise relation to public wants and preferences remained controversial. His critics held that he sought to impose his own standards of production rather than to help determine public interest. Nevertheless, he appeared to the public as a dedicated and valuable citizen whose full achievement was yet to be determined.

Further Reading

Nader and his crusades are treated in G.S. McClellan, ed., The Consuming Public (1968); G. De Bell, ed., The Voter's Guide to Environmental Politics (1970); J.G. Mitchell and C.L. Stallings, ed., Ecotactics (1970), with an introduction by Nader; J. Ridgeway, The Politics of Ecology (1970); A. A. Aaker and G. S. Day, eds., Consumerism (1971); and L. J. White, The Automobile Industry since 1945 (1971). Articles on Nader have appeared in the Ann Arbor News (March 31, 1996); the Nation (January 8, 1996); Business Week (March 6, 1989); and Fortune (May 22, 1989). □

Nader, Ralph 1934 –

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ralph Nader has been one of the most important and enduring figures of the American Left since his emergence on the national stage in 1965 with the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed. In this work, Nader argued that the American automobile industry paid insufficient attention to safety. The book sparked public outrage and congressional action, including the creation in 1966 of the National Highway Safety Bureau (now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and passage of many car safety regulations. Perhaps more enduringly, Nader persuaded the public to give more weight to safety concerns when purchasing cars. With his far-reaching advocacy work over the decades, Nader has firmly established his place in the radical American tradition as a critic of the concentration of corporate power. Nader views corporate power as a threat to consumer rights and health, the environment, government integrity, and, most importantly, a well-functioning democracy.

The son of immigrant parents from Lebanon who owned a modest restaurant in a small Connecticut town, Nader earned his undergraduate degree at Princeton University and a law degree at Harvard. His years after law school were spent traveling, dabbling in journalism, and practicing law in Connecticut. He relocated to Washington, D.C., when his work on auto safety caught the attention of policymakers, and he quickly established himself as the most effective “policy entrepreneur” of his generation.

The 1966 to 1976 period marks the height of Nader’s influence in American politics. With an innate talent for conducting exhaustive policy research, generating public attention, and manipulating the press, Nader’s advocacy pushed such legislation as the Wholesale Meat Act, the Wholesale Poultry Products Act, the National Gas Pipeline Safety Act, and the Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act through to passage in the late 1960s. His stature in Washington grew to such proportions that Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern invited Nader to consider joining his ticket in the 1972 election.

Building on his successes and public acclaim, Nader established a consumer advocacy group in Washington, the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, in 1968. Staff lawyers, publicists, and grassroots activists, dubbed “Nader’s Raiders” for their proclivity to challenge the Washington and corporate establishment, investigated patronage practices at the Federal Trade Commission, special interest pressure in Congress, and the safety of the nuclear power industry, among other issues. Over the years, Nader would create a long list of not-for-profit advocacy groups, including the Public Interest Research Group, Public Citizen, and Democracy Rising.

Nader’s career, however, has been marred by his inability to accept compromise as the price of democratic politics. His intransigence derailed the effort to create a federal department of consumer affairs. He also turned against many of his protégés who served in the Jimmy Carter administration (1977-1981) because, in Nader’s view, they were too quick to compromise on matters of corporate regulation. Nader lost battles, allies, and influence as a consequence of his ideological purity.

By 1980 a concerted effort by American business to counter Nader’s consumer rights movement by increasing corporate lobbying paid off. Conservative Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) won election as president, and Congress and the country moved in a more conservative direction. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Nader and his allies fought to hold the advances in regulatory policy that they had made in the 1960s and 1970s.

Locked out of the newly conservative Washington establishment, Nader traveled and lectured throughout the country, seeding small citizen projects at the state and local level. Unhappy with the centrism of the Bill Clinton Democrats in the 1990s, Nader ran for U.S. president four times: in 1992 as a write-in candidate for the Democratic nomination in the early primary states; in 1996 as the Green Party nominee; in 2000 as the candidate of the Association of State Green Parties; and in 2004 as an independent candidate. Nader argued that both major parties were beholden to corporations, and he promised to enact campaign finance reform, limit free trade agreements, and extend government regulation of the environment and the economy. In all of his runs, Nader would win no more than 3 percent of the popular vote (in 2000).

The move into electoral politics embittered many former Nader’s Raiders, who thought that Nader’s run for the presidency jeopardized the Democratic Party’s chances. In 2000 these critics were proved right when Nader siphoned likely voters for the Democratic nominee, giving Republican candidate George W. Bush a narrow margin of victory in the state of Florida, a victory that provided Bush with enough electoral votes to win the presidency.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Martin, Justin. 2002. Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

Nader, Ralph. 1965. Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile. New York: Grossman. Expanded ed., 1972.

Nader, Ralph. 2002. Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender. New York: St. Martin’s.

Richard M. Flanagan

NADER, RALPH 1934-

Consumer advocate

True Believer

Ralph Nader is both a reformer and a visionary. His roots extended to the early-twentieth-century muckrakers, to Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and others who roused the nation against business exploitation. So he launched fact-filled thunder-bolts from the 1960s onward against hazardous automobiles and natural gas pipelines, unsafe mining methods, unwholesome meat processing, and other dangers to the consumers.

David versus Goliath

Nader was a virtually monkish idealist who was single, lived ascetically, owned no property, and cared only for the truth he was uncovering. Nader's assaults fitted the temper of the Vietnam War era and the growing assumption that the country's leaders and institutions were self-centered and deceitful. Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed: the Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile (1965) was a smash hit, and the thin, thirtyish man became an overnight folk hero.

Background

Nader grew up in a Lebanese immigrant family where politics was taken seriously. He went on to Princeton and Harvard Law School, where he raised doubts about the conventional argument regarding the driver's culpability in auto accidents. Could the vehicle itself be a factor? Nader continued this argument in Washington, D.C., where he found allies in Congress and in the Johnson administration who pushed through the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1967. Nader had raised a furor in 1966 by charging that General Motors had counterattacked his criticism of the Chevrolet Corvair by having private detectives harass him with investigations and sexual enticement schemes. The GM president apologized, and Nader filed a multimillion-dollar suit for damages, from which he collected $425,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

Creating an Infrastructure

Inevitably, Nader attracted followers, often young lawyers and college students who wanted to join his consumer-rights crusade and who became known as Nader's Raiders. He strengthened the crusade in 1971 by founding a network of organizations, Public Citizen, which grew out of his Washington-based Center for the Study of Responsive Law. He also established the Corporate Accountability Research Group, financing it with the money gained from GM. Finally, from 1970 onward there was the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), which was associated with groups in twenty-six states at the community and campus level. Nader had institutionalized his movement with a variety of watchdog, lobbying, and investigative groups that probed into both corporations and the regulatory agencies that he insisted had allied themselves with the very enterprises they were supposed to supervise. By 1971 Nader stood as the sixth most popular figure in the country, according to a Harris poll, and his position with the media was unrivaled as a reliable source of news that affected everyone. Nader helped create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 and the Freedom of Information Act in 1974.

Backlash

There was, however, a backlash against Nader's sustained critique of the American corporate structure as the 1970s wore on, conservatism increased, the economy declined, and Americans feared the loss of jobs more than the loss of health. His criticism had become familiar, his face yet another on television. In 1978 Congress narrowly failed to establish the Consumer Protection Agency, which he had advocated, and the automakers continued to stave off his attempts to impose inflatable air bags on their products. Nader's astringent, highly individualistic personality also cost him support, and it became easy to regard him as an uncompromising zealot.

A Deeper Commitment

Behind his concern with consumerism lay a deeper commitment, that of building structures to engage Americans deeply in political action, pulling them away from political parties per se and into the realm of independent citizenship. Being a citizen has been, to Nader, the very essence of a democracy; consumer action is simply a means to that end.

Sources:

Robert F. Bcckhorn, Nader: The People's Lawyer (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972);

Hays Gorey, Nader and the Power of Everyman (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1975);

Charles McCarry, Citizen Nader (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972).

NADER, RALPH 1934-

Consumer advocate, lawyer

The Consumers' Watchdog

Progressive magazine once hailed him as "Citizen of the Republic" because of his crusading efforts to protect the public; others, less sympathetic to his causes, have referred to him as the nation's nag. But whether regarded as a hero or a villain, Ralph Nader has been the country's leading consumer advocate since the mid 1960s. Yet, in an ironic twist, this defender of consumer rights is in many ways a nonconsumer. He does not own a car, lives in an inexpensive rooming house, avoids all junk food, and dresses plainly. In fact, as of 1983, he was still wearing the same pair of shoes he purchased in 1959.

Unsafe at Any Speed

Nader graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton and then attended Harvard Law School, where he became interested in automobile safety. After practicing law in Connecticut for several years, he headed to Washington, D.C., became a consultant to the Department of Labor, and returned to his research on auto safety. In 1965 he published his findings in his book Unsafe at Any Speed. The study attacked General Motors for selling a car, the Chevrolet Corvair, that had known safety defects. The book became an immediate best-seller, and General Motors, in a move to discredit the author, hired a detective to investigate Nader's politics, religion, and sex life. When news of the investigation leaked out, the chairman of GM was forced to apologize to Nader and ultimately paid him $425,000 to drop the invasion-of-privacy suit. With this money Nader created several consumer-interest groups, including the Center for the Study of Responsive Law. Collectively these organizations included many young, idealistic staff members who became known as "Nader's Raiders."

Protective Legislation

With the support of his raiders who were sent to investigate a wide variety of industries and products, Nader campaigned for consumer protection laws in the 1960s and 1970s. He played an essential role in obtaining the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966—which established a federal agency to set auto safety standards—the Consumer Products Safety Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act. He also successfully lobbied for job protection for whistle-blowers and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Persistence

In 1972, after a flurry of legislative victories, Nader ranked seventh in a Gallup poll of most-admired people, immediately ahead of the pope and comedian Bob Hope. By the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, however, Nader's influence declined; Congress defeated, for example, his proposed Consumer Protection Agency in 1978. Yet Nader's commitment to improving people's lives never wavered, and by the end of the 1980s it was clear he remained a real political power. He was part of the California initiative effort that reduced the skyrocketing cost of auto insurance rates, and his continued pursuit of safer automobiles led major manufacturers to install air bags in most of their cars.

Sources:

Ken Auletta, "Ralph Nader, Public Eye," Esquire (December 1983): 480-487;

Ralph Mayer, The Consumer Movement: Guardians of the Marketplace (Boston: Twayne, 1989).

Nader, Ralph (1934–), consumer advocate.Ralph Nader dominated the U.S. consumer movement during the last third of the twentieth century. Born in Winsted, Connecticut, to Lebanese immigrant parents, Nader graduated from Princeton College and Harvard Law School and began his law practice in Hartford. He first came to public attention in 1965 with Unsafe at Any Speed, an indictment of the design of the General Motors Corvair automobile and of the automotive industry's more general failure to attend to the “second collision,” the impact of occupants with the inside of the vehicle in an accident. This book and Nader's congressional testimony played a key role in passage of legislation in 1966 allowing the federal government to set vehicle‐safety standards.

Nader branched out quickly from his initial interest in auto safety, and his efforts resulted in a proliferation of federal consumer‐protection legislation during the 1960s and early 1970s, including the 1972 act creating the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission. Nader also established numerous consumer organizations, including the Center of Auto Safety, Health Research Group, and Public Citizen, Inc., staffed by young activists nicknamed “Nader's Raiders.” His legislative influence faded after 1977, following a failed, acrimonious effort to create a federal consumer protection agency.

Nader's determination and idealism elicited both admiration and condemnation. While his achievements won praise, he was criticized as unwilling to compromise, insensitive to the costs of his consumer‐protection initiatives, and excessively beholden to trial lawyers (the latter connection allegedly explaining his antipathy to no‐fault auto insurance).

His activist energies undiminished, Nader in the early 1990s campaigned against trade agreements that he believed jeopardized hard‐won consumer, environmental, and labor protections. In 1996, he ran as the Green party's candidate for president, refusing contributions and urging campaign finance reform. He received 685,128 votes. Again the Green party presidential nominee in 2000, he received 2.7 million votes. Had it not been for Nader's 97,488 votes in Florida, the Democrat Al Gore would almost certainly have carried the state and won the presidency. By 2004, when Nader again ran for president, his earlier reputation for consumer advocacy was eroded by accusations that he had become an ego‐driven political spoiler.
See also Environmentalism; Foreign Trade, U.S.; Legal Profession; North American Free Trade Agreement.

Bibliography

Hays Gorey , Nader and the Power of Everyman, 1975.
David Bollier , Citizen Action and Other Big Ideas: A History of Ralph Nader and the Modern Consumer Movement, 1989.

Robert N. Mayer

Paul S. Boyer

Ralph Nader , 1934–, U.S. consumer advocate and political reformer, b. Winsted, Conn. Admitted to the bar in 1958, he practiced law in Connecticut and was a lecturer (1961–63) in history and government at the Univ. of Hartford. In 1965, Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed, a best-selling indictment of the auto industry and its poor safety standards. Largely through his influence, the U.S. Congress passed (1966) a stringent auto safety act. Nader founded (1969) the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, which exposed both corporate irresponsibility and the federal government's failure to enforce regulation of business. He later founded the Center for Auto Safety (with Consumers' Union ), Public Citizen, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an umbrella for many other such groups. Briefly a presidential candidate in 1992, Nader since has run as the Green party's candidate in 1996 and 2000 and as an independent in 2004 (endorsed by the Reform party but not the Green party) and 2008. In recent years he has been a severe critic of the power of multinational corporations, as in his books The Good Fight and In Pursuit of Justice (both: 2004).

Bibliography: See speeches and writings collected in The Ralph Nader Reader (2000); biographies by R. F. Buckhorn (1972), C. McCarry (1972), and P. C. Marcello (2004).

NADER, RALPH

By the 1960s Ralph Nader (1934–), a lawyer and social crusader, had become a symbol of the public's concern about corporate honesty and consumer safety. Largely beginning with the publication of his first book in 1965, Unsafe At Any Speed: The Designed In Dangers of the American Automobile, Nader started to aggressively attack the design problems of consumer products. His documentation linked faulty car designs to a staggering number of automobile accidents and legislation was enacted to protect consumers. This inspired Nader to continue his investigations and efforts at legislation, which eventually led to increased safety standards in mines, federal regulations to control environmentally hazardous oil and gas pipes, and a more intense regulation of meat quality.

Ralph Nader was born in 1934 in Winsted, Connecticut, the son of immigrant Lebanese parents. He graduated with highest honors from Princeton University in 1955, and then went to Harvard Law School, where he received his degree in 1958. After briefly serving in the U.S. Army, and following a period of personal travel, Nader opened a law office in Hartford, Connecticut. There he also joined the University of Hartford faculty, teaching history and government while pursuing his law practice.

Nader became intensely interested in defective auto design largely through his law practice, where he dealt with auto injury cases. He became convinced that it was generally faulty design of automobiles, rather than driver incompetence, that led to the majority of automobile accidents. Certain that he had convincing statistics on his side, Nader began testifying before state legislative committees, and he frequently wrote magazine articles on the subject.

In 1964, when Nader was appointed as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor, he undertook a major study of automobile safety. Having all the data he needed, he left the Department of Labor in 1965 to write his first book, Unsafe At Any Speed. In March 1966, General Motors president James Roche admitted that his firm had Nader under surveillance in an effort to smear Nader with possible scandal. The admission received national television coverage and Nader became a public figure. Nader's book went on to become a national bestseller and prompted legislation proposals to regulate car safety, which ultimately became federal law in September 1965.

The mood of the country during the mid-1960s was dominated by progressive ideas and politics, and it was not long after the publication of his first book that Ralph Nader came to be known as the country's leading consumer advocate. Nader had made it his life's work to defend the public's well being. His relationship to business was often adversarial and critical. He often condemned businesses as overly profit-motivated and lacking in real concern for the safety of the consumer.

Nader's industry studies, including the coal mining, meat, poultry, and natural gas industries, all resulted in stricter health and safety laws. Nader also investigated hazards in the pesticide industry and alerted the public to the dangers of food additives, radiation from color television sets, and the excessive use of x-rays.

In 1996 Nader ran for the U.S. presidency as the Green Party candidate, winning support in popular polls. While running for president, Nader often summarized his philosophy, insisting: "You've got to keep the pressure on, even if you lose. The essence of the citizen's movement is persistence!" Nader was not elected president, and he continued to work for the consumer in the Progressive tradition. Though he remained a controversial figure, generally disliked by business, he was trusted by many consumers, and he persisted in his work for consumer advocacy and corporate accountability.

FURTHER READING

Buckhorn, Robert F. Nader: The People's Lawyer. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972.

Burt, Dan M. Abuse of Treat: A Report on Ralph Nader's Network. Chicago: Regency Gateway, 1982.

Griffin, Kelley. Ralph Nader Presents More Action for a Change. New York: Dembner Books, 1987.

McCarey, Charles. Citizen Nader. New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972.

Turner, James S. The Chemical Feast: The Ralph Nader Study Group Report on Food Protection and the Food and Drug Administration. New York: Grossman Publishing, 1970.

you've got to keep the pressure on, even if you lose. the essence of the citizen's movement is persistence!

ralph nader

Nader, Ralph (1934– ) US consumer affairs activist and lobbyist. His book Unsafe at any Speed (1965) revealed blatant compromise of passenger safety for the sake of costs in the US automobile industry. He subsequently examined issues concerned with mining, nuclear power, meat processing, and airlines. As the Green Party candidate in the 2000 US presidential elections, Nader gained 4% of the vote.