Exposed: the campaign to destroy justice.

In a small office just off Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., a few dedicated people are battling for truth and respect for the civil justice system. The Alliance for Justice describes itself as "a voice for the public interest community before Congress, the courts, and the federal government." It certainly has lived up to that claim.

Recently, the alliance published Justice for Sale: Shortchanging the Public Interest for Private Gain. This report documents what many of us have believed for years: Business interests and conservative foundations are waging an all-out war on the civil justice system. Their goal is to remake the system to their specifications at the cost of our clients' rights.

"The campaign has been waged in virtually every legal and political arena in an attempt to win over the public, law students and academics, legislators, and - most importantly - judges," according to the alliance. The report looks at five major fronts in this assault.

* Business-funded "public-interest" law firms. The report exposes so-called public-interest firms like the Pacific Legal Foundation and the National Legal Center for the Public Interest as merely tools by which their corporate sponsors protect their wealth in court. The alliance concludes that these firms maintain an intimate relationship with their sponsors to influence those most able to affect the status of big business in the legal system - namely, judges.

* The civil justice "reform" movement. The alliance describes how the insurance and manufacturing industries spend millions of dollars in an effort to sell the public a bill of goods. They perpetuate myths of a "litigation explosion," "lawsuit abuse," and rampant punitive damage awards. At the same time, they lobby state and federal lawmakers and bankroll seminars for lawyers and judges designed to "educate" them about the alleged need to restrict the right to trial by jury.

The alliance points out that the membership list of Citizens for Civil Justice, formed to promote Dan Quayle's "reform" proposals, is "dominated by corporate and insurance interests, including Aetna Life and Casualty, Allstate Insurance, ATRA [the American Tort Reform Association], General Dynamics, the Insurance Information Institute, and Eli Lilly."

The corporate forces also have enlisted academics and think tanks to give intellectual legitimacy to their campaign. For example, the alliance describes how the Manhattan Institute tries to influence the legal and judicial communities by publishing books and articles and holding seminars throughout the country. The institute sends its books to state and federal judges free of charge.

Who funds the Manhattan Institute? According to the alliance, the institute is primarily supported by corporations and insurance companies, including Aetna, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citicorp, Exxon, Pfizer, Philip Morris, State Farm, and others.

* Law and economics. The alliance documents how conservative foundations - including Lynde and Harry Bradley, Olin, Sarah Scaife, and Smith Richardson - have donated millions of dollars to elite law schools for the study of law and economics, a legal philosophy that values property rights above all. These donations have supported faculty research projects, scholarships, workshops, and courses in law and economics.

* Judicial "education" programs. Major corporations and business-friendly foundations have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in privately run judicial seminars, the alliance reports. Here, judges are schooled - again, free of charge - in areas of the law that are of primary concern to business, including how to limit the rights of injured victims.

For example, the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University, which receives almost a third of its funding from large corporations, has taught economic theory to about 40 percent of the federal judiciary, the alliance reports. Judges are invited to attend programs at exotic resorts with all expenses paid. Although labeled "educational" programs, these seminars amount to opportunities for business interests to lobby federal judges to adopt corporate America's distorted view of the civil justice system.

* The Federalist Society. This group, dedicated to recruiting law students into the pro-business coalition, is funded heavily by business-backed foundations. The foundations have poured money into the society to "groom law students to embrace and promote their agenda into the next decade and beyond," according to the alliance.

The bottom line, the alliance concludes, is that whatever success the "reform" movement enjoys is due in large part to the unparalleled financial resources devoted to it. Not the facts, not the truth, but money. Unfortunately, public-interest groups and independent-minded legal scholars cannot match the resources of corporate America.

The alliance has exposed the lies, corruption, and true aims of these moneyed interests. They seek to remake the civil justice system to benefit their pocketbooks, not the citizens of this country. We must join the alliance in exposing these antidemocratic forces wherever they go to press their agenda.

Consider Justice for Sale required reading. To get a copy, send $15 to Alliance for Justice, 1601 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 601, Washington, DC 20009.

Our thanks to that small group of dedicated people just off Dupont Circle.