Ralph Nader Click to enlarge

• Born: 27 February 1934
• Birthplace: Winsted, Connecticut
• Best Known As: Author of Unsafe at Any Speed and perennial presidential candidate

Ralph Nader gained national fame with his 1965 book Unsafe At Any Speed, which exposed the automobile industry's irresponsibility when it came to designing safe cars. (The book focused on the Chevrolet Corvair, which ceased production shortly thereafter.) Nader became the best-known consumer advocate in the U.S., lecturing widely and forming non-profit groups like Public Citizen, whose stated goal was to protect consumers against corporate carelessness and greed. His youthful followers became known as "Nader's Raiders." He ran for president in 1996 and 2000 as a candidate for the Green Party. Critics accused Nader of taking votes away from Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 elections, as Gore narrowly lost to Republican George W. Bush. Undaunted, Nader ran again as an independent candidate in the elections of 2004 and 2008.

Nader graduated from Princeton in 1955, and from Harvard Law School in 1958... Nader's father immigrated to the U.S. from Lebanon.

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).

For more information on Ralph Nader, visit Britannica.com.

(1934- )

Widely recognized for his indictment of the American automobile industry in his book Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), Nader is often seen as an important catalyst in the consumers' rights movement in the United States, playing an influential role in the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other consumer protection bodies. After graduating in 1955 in government and economics at Princeton University, he studied at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1958. It was at the latter that he first became interested in automobile safety. Unsafe at Any Speed was largely directed against General Motors, particularly the Corvair car, which had a record of flipping over. He was also highly critical of the excessive styling of many radiator grilles and the high degree of potential harm that pedestrians might incur if hit. He estimated that styling at General Motors accounted for about $700 per automobile whereas safety accounted for about 23 cents. Nader became something of a public champion when it was discovered that General Motors had hired private detectives to undermine his credibility. The company was forced to apologize before a televised Senate Committee. Nader's campaign resulted in changes to the law, including the National Traffic and Motor Safety Act. A number of themes underpin Nader's subsequent campaigns, including the promotion of consumer cooperatives as a means of gaining greater consumer autonomy in the market place, the devising of means of bringing about government accountability, and more humane business practices.

(1934- ), consumer advocate and activist. With unique vision and effectiveness, Nader invented and led a movement of Americans fighting for what he called "economic self-determination," using "citizen action against the growth of the corporate state and its political and economic disenfranchisement of the public."

Raised by immigrant Lebanese-American parents in Winsted, Connecticut, Nader graduated from Princeton in 1955 and then Harvard Law School. In 1963 he abandoned private practice in Hartford and with one suitcase hitchhiked to Washington, D.C., to open shop as a public crusader. After taking lodgings at the ymca, he "walked across the street and had a hot dog, my last." He quickly researched what was in the hot dog and declared war on the meat-packing industry. Nader soon came to symbolize an unflagging commitment to consumer rights and participatory democracy.

In 1965 his Unsafe at Any Speed lambasted General Motors for producing a Corvair riddled with safety problems and for spending a mere $1 million of its $1.7 billion profits on safety research. GM promptly hired a detective in hopes of unearthing some blackmail material. But the private eye found nothing, and General Motors president John Roche was summoned before a Senate committee to apologize.

During the Corvair fracas, one corporate executive predicted the product safety movement would be a passing fad. But in 1969, riding a crest of Vietnam-inspired activism, Nader sent two hundred of his young "Raiders" into battle on issues ranging from the environment and auto safety to the rights of the disabled, insurance regulation, freedom of information in government, tax reform, public health, and control of Congress by moneyed interests.

"Naderism" soon became a credo for disgruntled consumers. His 1974 and 1975 "Critical Mass" conferences on atomic power, which he labeled a "technological Vietnam," launched a movement that helped reshape global energy policy. The ongoing Critical Mass Energy Project grew out of those conferences, taking its place alongside other Nader-inspired groups such as Congress Watch, the Center for Responsive Law, a nationwide network of Public Interest Research Groups, Public Citizen, the Center for Auto Safety, the National Insurance Consumer Organization, and the Health Research Group. The work of these and other Naderite organizations led directly or indirectly to the formation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, at least eight major federal consumer protection laws, and periodic recalls of millions of defective cars and trucks.

In the Reagan-dominated 1980s, Nader's critics argued that his activist credo had run its course. But in 1988 he helped win a California referendum mandating unprecedented insurance rate rollbacks and then used national radio talk shows to hold off a congressional pay hike.

Maintaining the same modest bachelor quarters throughout (his parsimony is legendary), Nader has thus far outlasted six presidencies and a dozen Congresses. "You've got to keep the pressure on, even if you lose," he said. "The essence of the citizens' movement is persistence."

As the 1990s began, Nader added to his agenda making his Connecticut hometown a model democracy. "The most important office in America for anyone to achieve," he said, "is full-time citizen." In a quarter-century of activism, he seemed to have virtually defined that exalted office for America's largest generation.

Bibliography:

David Bollier, Citizen Action and Other Big Ideas: A History of Ralph Nader and the Modern Consumer Movement (1989).

Author:

Harvey Wasserman

See also Liberalism.

(nā'dər) , 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 (endorsed by the Reform party but not the Green party) in 2004. 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).

(b. 1934)

1965	Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-in Dangers of the American Automobile. Nader's first book on the safety defects of American cars establishes his reputation as a crusading consumer advocate.

(nay-duhr)

An American lawyer of the twentieth century and a leading advocate for consumers. Nader became prominent in the 1960s with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, which accused the automobile industry of producing dangerous cars. Later, Nader attacked unsanitary conditions in the meat packing industry and called for more attention to railroad and airline safety.

Nader initially was known for his focus on immediate and concrete concerns; however, in the 1990s he increasingly called for basic changes in the ways in which business is conducted, and in 2000 he ran for president as the candidate of the Green Party.

Nader's assistants, often university students, are known as “Nader's Raiders.”

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 DDT on campus trees.

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, created an informal legal aid society, and lectured from 1961 to 1963 at the University of Hartford.

Having worked on a 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, then serving as assistant secretary of labor, Nader worked as a consultant at the Labor Department and wrote a study that called for federal responsibility for auto safety.

Nader left the Labor Department 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 safety standards on autos 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 another issue. "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 of GM did not take kindly to the stones thrown by this David, and the company began a campaign of harassment and intimidation intended to abort Nader's efforts. Congressional committee hearings later, in 1966, revealed that GM's campaign against Nader involved harassing phone calls and attempts to lure Nader into compromising situations with women. The company formally apologized before Congress for these tactics.

Politicians in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. public 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 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 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 Nader had helped 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 chlorinated fluorocarbons, which damage the ozone layer; and worked to prevent limitations on damages that consumers may receive from corporations through civil lawsuits.

Nader has written and edited dozens of books in his career. These 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 Truth about Airline Safety (1994).

Quotes:

"There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship."

"Obviously, the answer to oil spills is to paper-train the tankers."

"For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull."

"When strangers start acting like neighbors... communities are reinvigorated."

"Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked."

"Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs."

See more famous quotes by Ralph Nader