How the battle against J.A.I.L. was won.
The Wisconsin Law Journal recently took a moment to talk about the attacks against the judiciary, and held out the State Bar’s efforts in South Dakota in defeating an absolutely looney tunes ballot proposal (that many of us knew as the JAIL Amendment) as the model for getting the business community involved. Here’s what the WLJ wrote on the topic:
To raise funds to fight the initiative, Barnett went to the business community, which was at first indifferent.
When asked by a corporation why it should care about an initiative in a state where it does only 0.1 percent of its litigation, Barnett stated he would respond, “because if it passes, you’ll be doing 99 percent of your litigation there.”
By emphasizing that the amendment, if passed, would allow juries to disregard the provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code, Barnett was able to enlist the business community to help defeat the measure.
and…
Key to defeating the measure was using laypersons as spokespersons against the measure.
Focus groups that Barnett assembled indicated that judges were the worst messengers for the group, with lawyers being second worst.
Instead of making the case against the measure himself, Barnett toured the state with a layperson to deliver the message. Barnett was just there to answer technical questions that the layperson could not.
Although J.A.I.L. had intended to move on to other states in 2008 after South Dakota, and eventually enact similar measures in all 50 states, according to Barnett, the group has no initiatives on the November ballot in any state.
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