Nader, Ralph (1924–)

CONSUMER ADVOCATE, lawyer, environmentalist, feminist, and presidential candidate, Ralph Nader has forged a unique place in American culture and politics. Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. He graduated from Princeton University in 1955 and earned a law degree from Harvard in 1958. After practicing law for a brief period in Hartford, Nader arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1963 to work for Daniel Moynihan, the assistant secretary of labor. Nader wrote numerous articles for such diverse publications as The Nation and the Christian Science Monitor.

Pursuing an interest developed at Harvard, Nader also served as a voluntary adviser to a Senate subcommittee investigating automobile safety. He soon developed a special interest in the Corvair produced by General Motors (GM). Consumers who had bought the Corvair between 1960 and 1963 had filed 106 lawsuits against General Motors for a total of over $40 million.

The chief problem with the Corvair was that ignition switches sometimes stuck causing drivers to lose steering control. In his book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, Nader used his skills as a lawyer to prepare a scathing indictment of GM in such a way that he was safe from legal actions that GM could take against him.

Since GM had no legal grounds to go after Nader, they hoped to discover something that would discredit him. GM hired two private detectives to follow him. When Nader discovered the detectives, he sued GM for violation of privacy, and the huge corporation was forced to publicly admit its guilt. Nader received a $425,000 settlement, most of which he used to create the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) to serve as a permanent watchdog for consumer interests. By May 1969, when GM stopped producing the Corvair, Nader had become a household name of consumer advocacy.

In June 1968, Nader gathered a group of seven young lawyers with similar watchdog interests who became known as Nader's Raiders. The following summer, Nader selected 200 applicants for Nader's Raiders from a pool of 30,000 applicants and targeted the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Nader sent the young lawyers into various corporations and agencies to get information to protect workers, taxpayers, and the environment.

In 1969, Nader set out to make automobile tires safer. He had evidence that the polyester used in the production of tires was likely to cause dangerous failures on the open road. His research revealed that tire manufacturers were withholding information in advertisements for their products, including the results of road tests that indicated safety problems. Additionally, it was revealed that tire manufacturers were recouping their losses from recalled tires by using loopholes in existing laws to recycle the tires by selling them abroad.

Nader forced General Motors to agree to release results of tests when consumers requested them, engineered truth in advertising of tires, helped to close loopholes in laws, and lobbied for the rights of consumers to file class-action lawsuits against tire manufacturers. Even Congress was not sacred to Nader. In 1971, in his magazine article, “Making Congress Work,” Nader accused Congress of being too heavily influenced by lobbyists and other special interest groups and contended that they were unable to check the abuses of campaign finance. More than 30 years later, campaign finance and its regulation remain top concerns for the U.S. public and Congress.

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