I don’t have the citations for the Altio holdings at hand. I just know the one time I brought a 1983 action I was really disappointed at how discouraged by the “sage” bar I was from brining an action against a governmental entity.

While in that case it was established that the illegal enforcement of a garnishment by an employer was not action under “color of law” we did not get to the qualified immunity issues as to the governmental parties because we settled. I see no harm, especially in todays environment, to continue to question any judicial tendency to be liberal in construing the scope of qualified immunity. I just am not so much a legal positivist.

I don’t mean to discount your experience or that of LHP. My main point about the resentment of Republicans because of the regulatory features of tort law was rejoined by FP opining that there were probably criminal civil rights violations in the Renzi phone taps or illegal phone tapping in general. This is how we got onto the entire topic of civil rights torts. The larger point is the development of corporate strategies of non-accountability to evade civil processes in tort litigation carried over into the procedural strategies of the current administration as an attitude holding the nature of law is nothing but personal fiat and that consequences can be avoided by rolling obfuscation and delay. And we see this shift away from the just standing of individual citizens in the bankruptcy legislation, the establishment of national jurisdiction in the credit industry and the restricting the venues of class actions. These shifts in the law are all driven by considerations of corporate economic advantage.

That so much of the private corporate sector is now conflated with governmental interests is a shame but that is how we have evolved. We shall see if there is any viability left in free market ideas if we are able to move on from the petroleum economy toward electrical transportation as rapidly as our ancestors made the change for horse and buggy to the automobile. My fear is that the allure of power will dampen the economic benefits of the free society apportioning the cost of economic harm upon those who suffer rather than upon those who create the risk.

This idea, the idea of responsibility for harm done, is a critical feature of the development of tort law including notions of strict liability which really gets to my principle gripe concerning the Republicans and their weltanschauung of pre-emptive war which is so consummate with their predatory economic notions

This point is that all know that war is an inherently dangerous activity that will certainly lead to collateral casualties and death but there is no strong public argument being made assigning this responsibility to GWB in any kind of way that insists on accountability for these losses. This may be fine imperial law. But economically, in a global economy, we are operating a long way from the need for imperial underpinnings. This is why the lack of public debate leading to any authorization of military action in Iraq is so shameful. There was no public political sense prudently insisting upon an acknowledgment of the obvious costs that would be incurred, or a question of who would be accountable for these. We were treated only to a sense of entitlement, marketing violence and trickery to avoid legal accountability as a consequences of actions taken. And this is the attitude the current Republican administration has to legal accountability. Accountability should be at the heart of civil justice as a regulation of selfish, thoughtless, and shortsighted actions. Those who prefer to act arbitrarily solely for personal private gain at the expense of the public are those people who tend to resent the cost of paying the price associated with traditional notions of justice and fair play. They work at developing tactics and influence, that have the color of some kind of legitimacy, to shield their risks. Still the private accumulation of capital, though perhaps an underpinning to a greater or lesser degree, is not at the heart of the Constitutional order designed to check and balance earthly powers as they may arise in the context of the Republic.