American Law Institute tries to sidestep conflict of interest problems we documented in its dealings with the tobacco industry

The American Law Institute, which produces influential reports on the law, recently published a lame response to our paper in the Iowa Law Review demonstrating how the tobacco companies quietly worked behind the scenes to get the ALI to recommend laws and judicial interpretations that shielded the tobacco companies from liability for the death and destruction they caused for decades.

Rather than dealing with the massive evidentiary record that we presented, the ALI dismissed the problems of conflict of interests by asserting that we just did'nt understand how the law works.

Needless to say, we responded, pointing out that the ALI ignored the substance of our paper.

Hopefully some ALI members will demand that the organization actively engage the serious problems that we identified. (One already has.)

In the meantime, no one should take ALI's recommendations seriously as independent objective advice.