(10 of 11)
As a result of Nader's indictments, the Government is making many changes. "When Nader issued his report on the Federal Trade Commission, my first feeling was irritation," says an FTC commissioner, Mary Gardiner Jones. "But I feel now that the commission has pulled itself together more, and faster, than if it had not come out." Though the FTC still has a long way to go, it has lately begun to take more vigorous actions. Sample: after nearly a decade of indecision, the commission in August ordered gasoline stations and food stores that use giveaway games for promotion to inform customers as to just how infinitesimal are their chances of winning.
Though Nader has rarely done his fighting in the courtroom, he has exerted a profound influence on the law. Before his auto-safety crusade, accident injuries were blamed on faulty drivers —not faulty cars. In order to collect damages, an accident victim was usually required to prove negligence on the part of a manufacturer. But Nader contended that automakers should build "crashworthy" cars that would not cause bodily injury in a "second collision" after the accident itself. The second-collision concept is now recognized by many courts. A 22-year-old Pennsylvania college student, who suffered permanent injury when the roof of a car buckled in an accident, recently won the right to use the "second-collision" principle in a damage suit against General Motors. U.S. District Judge John A. Fullam ruled that the roof should have been built to withstand the car's rollover and that automakers are required "to provide more than merely a movable platform capable of transporting passengers from one point to another." Since the second-collision principle could be applicable to other products as well, manufacturers may become more safety-conscious and design their products to avoid injury in case of mishap.
The New Citizenship
The entire legal profession must be reformed, Nader maintains, if society is to alleviate its ailments. "The best lawyers should be spending their time on the great problems—on water and air pollution, on racial justice, on poverty and juvenile delinquency, on the joke that ordinary rights have become," he says. "But they are not. They are spending their time defending Geritol, Rice Krispies and the oil-import quota."
That is changing, in no small part because of Nader. Of the 39 Harvard Law Review editors who will be graduated next June, not one intends to join a high-paying Wall Street law firm. Instead, most plan to enter neighborhood agencies or government service—and represent the individual against the institutions. Nader believes that the rise of the youthful protester, which began in the '60s, will accelerate into the '70s. "You watch," he predicts. "General Motors will be picketed by young activists against air pollution."
Student demonstrators, he believes, will increasingly choose to become student investigators. Many of them will move to Washington and, like Nader, spend their early careers prowling among the Government-filing cabinets, searching for examples of abuse and seeking