{"id":1043,"date":"2012-03-30T20:58:31","date_gmt":"2012-03-31T00:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=1043"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:23:41","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:23:41","slug":"smartalec-how-stand-your-ground-laws-became-entrenched-nationwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/03\/30\/smartalec-how-stand-your-ground-laws-became-entrenched-nationwide\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSmart\u201dALEC? How Stand Your Ground Laws Became Entrenched Nationwide"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sushila Rao<\/em><\/p>\n

The distressing tragedy of Trayvon Martin\u2019s death has also unwittingly drawn attention to the role played by an influential but hitherto low-profile organization in getting Stand Your Ground Laws enacted nation-wide. \u00a0American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a business-funded group which describes itself as \u00a0pursuing a nonpartisan agenda, but has been attacked by critics as a standard \u201cmovement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects,\u201d including the Kochs and Exxon Mobil.<\/p>\n

ALEC was originally founded by Paul Weyrich\u2014of \u201cMoral Majority\u201d fame\u2014and basically helps develop bills for state lawmakers. \u00a0Progressives have cautioned, however, that\u00a0ALEC is more than just your run-of-the-mill pro-business lobbying group. \u00a0ALEC \u00a0recruits members of state legislatures to pay a $50 annual membership fee, and solicits millions of dollars from corporations to finance a series of conferences where state lawmakers confabulate with big business to write model legislation that can be seamlessly transplanted at the state level across the country. \u00a0The\u00a0Center for Media and Democracy<\/a>\u00a0(CMD) reports that over 98% of its revenue comes from sources other than legislative dues, primarily from corporations and corporate foundations.
\n
\nBy prepackaging and delivering standardized legislation endorsed by suitably pliant lawmakers\u2014who often have no independent research staff of their own\u2014ALEC\u2019s efficient and efficacious modus operandi\u00a0permits corporate America to\u00a0literally<\/em>\u00a0write its own laws. \u00a0CMD also points out that\u00a0corporations and politicians actually vote on these bills behind closed doors as\u00a0equals\u00a0in these ALEC conferences.<\/p>\n

Commentators<\/a>\u00a0have characterized this process as \u201ca chain-restaurant approach to public policy, supplying precooked McBills to state lawmakers.\u201d \u00a0The anti-union bills in Wisconsin were written by ALEC, as also the anti-immigrant SB1070 passed in Arizona.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, as\u00a0Paul Krugman<\/a>\u00a0describes in the New York Times, ALEC\u2019s legislative strategies are not necessarily directed at garnering immediate\u00a0gratification\u00a0for its corporate sponsors. \u00a0They are more geared towards shaping the long-term political and legal framework in a manner conducive to sustaining incrementally corporation-friendly legislation.<\/p>\n

Opponents claim that the \u201cStand Your Ground\u201d law was passed by the Florida Legislature in 2006, a few months after a very similar piece of model legislation was crafted by ALEC. \u00a0The NRA has close ties to ALEC and has long been one of its monetary contributors.<\/p>\n

ALEC, however, denies that it can be pinpointed as the origin of the law, though\u00a0it does\u00a0use<\/a>\u00a0the Florida law as a model for other states. \u00a0It has also publicly disputed the applicability of Stand Your Ground laws to the Trayvon case, in which George Zimmerman followed\u00a0Trayvon after being told by a 911 dispatcher that there was no need to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sushila Rao The distressing tragedy of Trayvon Martin\u2019s death has also unwittingly drawn attention to the role played by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-gP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}