Nader, Ralph (1934–)

Ralph Nader is a renowned and effective U.S. social critic and crusader for consumer rights and the general public. Nader was born February 27, 1934, in the small town of Winsted, Connecticut, to Nathra and Rose Nader. Nader's parents were both Christian Arab immigrants from Lebanon. For a time, his father worked at minimum wage for a local textile mill that was nearby. He later owned a bakery and restaurant, where he often engaged his customers in political debates over issues related to consumer policy. It is rumored that young Nader often participated and even sometimes won his arguments with the customers—even though he was much younger and still in school. At a young age, Nader decided that he wanted to become a people's lawyer through the influence of his parents. Being immigrants, they deemed it necessary to conduct family seminars among Ralph and his three siblings—Shafeek (now deceased), Laura (a professor of anthropology at University of California, Berkeley), and Claire Nader—on the duties of citizenship within a democracy.

Nader attended high school at the Gilbert School and, upon graduation in 1951, was accepted into the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey. He graduated magna cum laude in 1955 with a double major in government and economics. He enrolled in Harvard Law School and became the editor of the Harvard Law Review, and it is rumored that Nader had his own key to the main library. He graduated with honors from Harvard Law in 1958 and then joined the U.S. Army in 1959 for a few short months. While in the army, Nader was famous for his devotion to frugality and his objection to commercialism. After leaving the army, Nader set up a small legal practice and spent a lot of time traveling. During this time, Nader also wrote for the Progressive Populist. Between 1961 and 1963, Nader took a job as a professor of history and government at the University of Hartford. In 1964, Nader resigned his professorship and hitchhiked to Washington, D.C., and was given a job by the assistant secretary of labor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. While in Washington, he became distressed by the American populace's indifference toward the actions of American corporations and conglomerates and to the global consequences of their actions; he began to speak out against the abusive effects of monopolistic corporate power—especially corporate actions that limited the public's ability to choose.

In 1965, Nader first made headlines and caught the public eye with his book Unsafe at Any Speed. His book outlines a study that detailed plans of American car companies to produce unsafe automobiles. Many companies were named, especially General Motors. The book brought about congressional hearings and a series of automobile safety laws in 1966. In an attempt to pressure Nader into not speaking out against the flawed automobiles, General Motors tried to discredit [Page 1002]Nader by hiring private detectives to investigate his past and attempted to trap him in a compromising position or situation, but all efforts failed. After learning of this invasion of personal space, Nader sued General Motors and its executives for harassment and invasion of privacy. In front of a national audience, in a Senate subcommittee meeting, General Motors was forced to publicly apologize during a live broadcast on television. Nader was given a net settlement of $284,000, and he used most of the money to expand his consumer rights efforts. The actual case, Nader v. General Motors Corporation, was decided by the New York Supreme Court, whose opinion in the case also helped expand the privacy rights that can be remedied in tort.

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