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Airline Deregulation Act

Full title	An Act to amend the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, to encourage, develop, and attain an air transportation system which relies on competitive market forces to determine the quality, variety, and price of air services, and for other purposes.
Enacted by the	95th United States Congress
Citations
Public Law	Pub.L. 95-504
Stat.	92 Stat. 1705
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as "Air Transportation Regulatory Reform Act" (S. 2493) by Howard Cannon (D-NV) on February 6, 1978 Committee consideration by: Senate Commerce, House Public Works Passed the Senate on April 19, 1978 (83–9) Passed the House on September 21, 1978 (363-8 as H.R. 12611) Reported by the joint conference committee on October 12, 1978; agreed to by the House on October 14, 1978 (356–6) and by the Senate on October 14, 1978 (82–4) Signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on October 24, 1978
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President Jimmy Carter signs the Airline Deregulation Act.

The Airline Deregulation Act (Pub.L. 95-504) is a United States federal law signed into law on October 24, 1978. The main purpose of the act was to remove government control over fares, routes and market entry (of new airlines) from commercial aviation. The Civil Aeronautics Board's powers of regulation were to be phased out, eventually allowing passengers to be exposed to market forces in the airline industry. The Act, however, did not remove or diminish the regulatory powers of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over all aspects of air safety.

History of airline regulation and the CAB[link]

Since 1937, the federal Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) had regulated all domestic interstate air transport routes as a public utility, setting fares, routes, and schedules. Airlines that flew only intrastate routes, however, were not regulated by the CAB. Those airlines were regulated by the governments of the states in which they operated. The CAB promoted air travel, for instance by generally attempting to hold fares down in the short-haul market, to be subsidized by higher fares in the long-haul market. The CAB also was obliged to ensure that the airlines had a reasonable rate of return.

The CAB earned a reputation for bureaucratic complacency; airlines were subject to lengthy delays when applying for new routes or fare changes, which were not often approved. World Airways applied to begin a low-fare New York City to Los Angeles route in 1967; the CAB studied the request for over six years only to dismiss it because the record was "stale." Continental Airlines began service between Denver and San Diego after eight years only because a United States Court of Appeals ordered the CAB to approve the application. Continental Air Lines, Inc. v. Civil Aeronautics Board, 519 F.2d 944, C.A.D.C. 1975.

This rigid system encountered tremendous pressure in the 1970s. The 1973 oil crisis and stagflation radically changed the economic environment, and technological advances such as the jumbo jet did the same thing. Most of the major airlines, whose profits were virtually guaranteed, favored the rigid system, but passengers forced to pay escalating fares were against it and were joined by communities that subsidized air service at ever-higher rates. Congress became concerned that air transport in the long run might follow the nation's railroads into trouble. In 1970 the Penn Central Railroad had collapsed in what was then the largest bankruptcy in history, resulting in a huge taxpayer bailout in 1976.^[1]

Leading economists had argued for several decades that this sort of regulation led to inefficiency and higher costs. The Carter administration argued that the industry and its customers would benefit from new entrants, the end of price regulation, and reduced control over routes and hub cities ^[2]

In 1970 and 1971, the Council of Economic Advisers in the Richard Nixon administration, along with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and other agencies, proposed legislation to diminish price collusion and entry barriers in rail and truck transportation. While this initiative was in process in the Gerald Ford administration, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, which had jurisdiction over antitrust law, began hearings on airline deregulation in 1975. Senator Ted Kennedy took the lead in these hearings.

The committee was deemed a more friendly forum than what likely would have been the more appropriate venue, the Aviation Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee. The Gerald Ford administration supported the Judiciary Committee initiative.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Alfred E. Kahn, a professor of economics at Cornell University, to be chair of the CAB. A concerted push for the legislation had developed, drawing on leading economists, leading think tanks in Washington, a civil society coalition advocating the reform (patterned on a coalition earlier developed for the truck-and-rail-reform efforts), the head of the regulatory agency, Senate leadership, the Carter administration, and even some in the airline industry. This coalition swiftly gained legislative results in 1978.^{[citation needed]}

Dan McKinnon would be the last chairman of the CAB and would oversee its final closure on January 1, 1985.

Legislative terms[link]

Senator Howard Cannon of Nevada introduced S. 2493 on February 6, 1978. It passed and was signed by Carter, becoming Pub.L. 95-504 on October 24, 1978.

The stated goals of the Act included the following:

• the maintenance of safety as the highest priority in air commerce;
• placing maximum reliance on competition in providing air transportation services;
• the encouragement of air service at major urban areas through secondary (nonprimary) or satellite airports;
• the avoidance of unreasonable industry concentration which would tend to allow one or more air carriers to unreasonably increase prices, reduce services, or exclude competition; and
• the encouragement of entry into air transportation markets by new air carriers, the encouragement of entry into additional markets by existing air carriers, and the continued strengthening of small air carriers.

The Act intended for various restrictions on airline operations to be removed over four years, with complete elimination of restrictions on domestic routes and new services by December 31, 1981, and the end of all domestic fare regulation by January 1, 1983. In practice, changes came rather more rapidly than that.

Among its many terms, the act did the following:

• the CAB's authority to set fares was gradually eliminated;
• the CAB was required to expedite processing of various requests;
• standards were liberalized for the establishment of new airlines;
• airlines were allowed to take over service on routes underutilized by competitors or on which the competitor received a local service subsidy;
• American-owned international carriers were allowed to offer domestic service;
• the evidentiary burden was placed on the CAB to block a route as inconsistent with "public convenience";
• the CAB was prohibited from introducing new regulation of charter trips;
• terminated certain subsidies for carrying mail were terminated effective January 1, 1986 and Essential Air Service subsidies effective 10 years from enactment (however, as of 2009, the EAS is still in existence, serving 146 communities in the US);
• terminated existing mutual aid agreements were terminated between air carriers;
• the CAB was allowed to grant antitrust immunity to carriers;
• the FAA was directed to develop safety standards for commuter airlines;
• intrastate carriers were allowed to enter into through service and joint fare agreements with interstate air carriers;
• air carriers, in hiring employees, were required to give preference to terminated or furloughed employees of another carrier for 10 years after enactment; and
• remaining regulatory authority were transferred to the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) and the CAB itself was dissolved.

Safety inspections and air traffic control remained in the hands of the FAA, and the act also required the Secretary of Transportation to report to Congress about air safety and any implications that deregulation would have in that matter.

Effects[link]

A 1996 Government Accountability Office report found that the average fare per passenger mile was about nine percent lower in 1994 than in 1979. Between 1976 and 1990 the paid fare had declined approximately thirty percent in inflation-adjusted terms. Passenger loads have risen, partly because airlines can now transfer larger aircraft to longer, busier routes and replace them with smaller ones on shorter, lower-traffic routes.^{[citation needed]}

However, these trends have not been distributed evenly throughout the national air transportation network. Costs have fallen more dramatically on higher-traffic, longer-distance routes than on shorter ones.

Exposure to competition led to heavy losses and conflicts with labor unions for a number of carriers. Between 1978 and mid-2001, nine major carriers (including Eastern, Midway, Braniff, Pan Am, Continental, America West Airlines, and TWA) and more than 100 smaller airlines went bankrupt or were liquidated—including most of the dozens of new airlines founded in deregulation's aftermath.

For the most part, smaller markets did not suffer the erosion of service predicted by some opponents of deregulation. However, until the advent of low-cost carriers, point-to-point air transport declined in favor of a more pronounced hub-and-spoke system. A traveler starting from a non-hub airport (a spoke) would fly into the hub, then reach the final destination by flying from the hub to another airport, the spoke. While more efficient for serving smaller markets, this system has enabled some airlines to drive out competition from their "fortress hubs." The growth of low-cost carriers such as Southwest Airlines has brought more point-to-point service back into the United States air transport system, and contributed to the development of a wider range of aircraft types that are better adaptable to markets of varying sizes.^{[citation needed]}

In 2011, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (who worked with Senator Kennedy on airline deregulation in the 1970s) wrote:

What does the industry's history tell us? Was this effort worthwhile? Certainly it shows that every major reform brings about new, sometimes unforeseen, problems. No one foresaw the industry's spectacular growth, with the number of air passengers increasing from 207.5 million in 1974 to 721.1 million last year. As a result, no one foresaw the extent to which new bottlenecks would develop: a flight-choked Northeast corridor, overcrowded airports, delays, and terrorist risks consequently making air travel increasingly difficult. Nor did anyone foresee the extent to which change might unfairly harm workers in the industry. Still, fares have come down. Airline revenue per passenger mile has declined from an inflation-adjusted 33.3 cents in 1974, to 13 cents in the first half of 2010. In 1974 the cheapest round-trip New York-Los Angeles flight (in inflation-adjusted dollars) that regulators would allow: $1,442. Today one can fly that same route for $268. That is why the number of travelers has gone way up.
So we sit in crowded planes, munch potato chips, flare up when the loudspeaker announces yet another flight delay. But how many now will vote to go back to the "good old days" of paying high, regulated prices for better service? Even among business travelers, who wants to pay "full fare for the briefcase?"^[3]

Ironically the very fear which motivated Airline Deregulation legislation, bankruptcy, has now been repeatedly visited upon it with effects equal to the Penn Central Railroad incident. In a statement to the public, former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall said,

"Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing shows airline industry deregulation was a mistake.^[4]"

Crandall added,

"The consequences of deregulation have been very adverse. Our airlines, once world leaders, are now laggards in every category, including fleet age, service quality and international reputation. Fewer and fewer flights are on time. Airport congestion has become a staple of late-night comedy shows. An even higher percentage of bags are lost or misplaced. Last-minute seats are harder and harder to find. Passenger complaints have skyrocketed. Airline service, by any standard, has become unacceptable."^[5].

More effects, conclusions and controversy are explained in the Airline deregulation article.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (May 2012)

Airline deregulation is the process of removing governmental imposed entry and price restrictions on airlines affecting, in particular, the carriers permitted to serve specific routes. In the United States, the term usually applies to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. A new form of regulation has been developed to some extent to deal with problems such as the allocation of the limited number of slots available at airports.

Introduction[link]

Airline services were historically heavily regulated, in part because of concerns about monopoly and oligopoly arising from the fact that in most cases, only a small number of airlines provided direct flights between a given "city pair".

In the U.S., the airline deregulation began in 1978. It was a part of a sweeping reduction in price and entry controls in United States transportation begun with initiatives in the Nixon Administration, carried out through the Ford and Carter Administrations, and followed up on in the Reagan Administration.

Many other countries have since deregulated their domestic markets,^{[citation needed]} and a similar process has applied to airline markets within the European Union. Many international airline markets remain subject to regulation.^{[citation needed]}

Airline deregulation in the United States[link]

Although federal regulation of the airline industry can be traced to the Air Mail Act of 1925 and the Air Commerce Act of 1926, serious economic regulation of commercial aviation began with passage of the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938. This Act created the Civil Aeronautics Authority, which became the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), and gave the CAB the power to regulate airline routes, control entry to and exit from the market, and mandate service rates. Airline safety regulation would come much later with passage of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, which created the Federal Aviation Administration.

Civil Aeronautics Board[link]

In 1938 the U.S. government, through the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), regulated many areas of commercial aviation such as routes, fares and schedules. The CAB had three main functions: to award routes to airlines, to limit the entry of air carriers into new markets, and to regulate fares for passengers. Much of the established practices of commercial passenger travel within the US, went back even farther, to the policies of W. F. Brown, the US postmaster general in the 1920s and early 1930s in the administration of President H. Hoover. Brown had changed the mail payments system to encourage the manufacture of passenger aircraft instead of mail carrying aircraft. His influence was crucial in awarding contracts so as to create four major domestic airlines: United, American, Eastern, and Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA). Similarly, Brown had also helped give Pan American a monopoly on international routes. (See also the US Centennial of Flight Commission [14])

Typical regulatory thinking from the 1940s onward is evident in a Civil Aeronautics Board report. In the absence of particular circumstances presenting an affirmative reason for a new carrier, there appears to be no inherent desirability of increasing the present number of carriers merely for the purpose of numerically enlarging the industry.^{[citation needed]}

Airline Deregulation Act[link]

The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 removed many of the previously mentioned controls. Prior to deregulation, it was required that airlines first seek regulatory approval to serve any given route. Thus incumbent airline operators could raise barriers to the challenge of new competition. This system was dismantled as a result of the Airline Deregulation Act. (See also the US Centennial of Flight Commission [15]) It also dismantled the notion of a flag carrier. What's taken its place is the extremely aggressive free-trade practice of loss leader strategy. A tactic wherein a company, which already dominates that market, will lower fares below cost in order to force any new competitors out of business.^[1]

Open Skies[link]

Open Skies agreements are bilateral agreements between the US and other countries to open the aviation market to foreign access and remove barriers to competition. They give airlines the right to operate air services from any point in the US to any point in the other country, as well as to and from third countries.

The U.S. has Open Skies agreements with more than 60 countries, including fifteen of the 25 EU nations. Open Skies agreements have been successful at removing many of the government implemented barriers to competition and allowing airlines to have foreign partners,^{[citation needed]} access to international routes to and from their home countries and freedom from many traditional forms of economic regulation.^{[citation needed]} A global industry would work better with a globally minded set of rules that would allow airlines from one country to establish airlines in another country and to operate domestic services in the territory of another country. These agreements still fail to approximate the freedoms that most industries have when competing in other global markets.^[2]

As jets were integrated into the market in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the industry experienced dramatic growth. By the mid-1960s, they were carrying roughly 100 million passengers and by the mid 1970s, over 200 million Americans had traveled by air.^[3] This steady increase in air travel began placing serious strains on the ability of federal regulators to cope with the increasingly complex nature of air travel. The onset of high inflation, low economic growth, falling productivity, rising labor costs and higher fuel costs proved problematic to the airlines.^[4]

Hub and spoke networks[link]

After deregulation, the airlines quickly moved to a hub-and-spoke system, whereby an airline selected some airport, the hub, as the destination point for flights from a number of origination cities, the spokes. Because the size of the planes used varied according to the travel on that spoke, and since hubs allowed passenger travel to be consolidated in “transfer stations”, capacity utilization increased,^{[citation needed]} allowing fare reduction. The hub-and-spoke model survives among the legacy carriers, but the low-cost carriers (LCCs), now 30 percent of the market, typically fly point to point. The network hubs model offers consumers more convenience for routes, but point-to-point routes have proven less costly for airlines to implement. Over time, the legacy carriers and the LCCs will likely use some combination of point to point and network hubs to capture both economies of scope and pricing advantages.^[2]

Impact[link]

Price[link]

Prices have declined steadily since deregulation. Quoting the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, "The inflation adjusted 1982 constant dollar yield for airlines has fallen from 12.3 cents in 1978 to 7.9 cents in 1997. This means that airline ticket prices are almost 40% lower today than they were in 1978 when the airlines were deregulated."^[5] Along with rising US. populations^[6] and the increasing demand of work-force-mobility, these trends were some of the catalysts for dramatic expansion in passenger miles flown, increasing from 250 million passenger miles in 1978 to 750 million passenger miles in 2005.^[7]

Service quality[link]

The quality of airline service can be measured in many different ways, including the number of aircraft departures, the total number of miles flown, seating comfort, aesthetic appearance of cabin crew, the timeliness of service, other programs and services, and various frills or amenities. It would appear that one of the greatest hallmarks and battle-cries of deregulation; improved services, has plainly failed.

Over the past several years the public's view of airline service quality has shown a significant drop.^[8] According to the 2008 American Customer Satisfaction Index, a University of Michigan study of 80,000 consumers’ expectations and preferences, the major US airlines ranked last among all the industries surveyed. In 2009, the airlines have moved up to being one point ahead of Cable & Satellite TV and the newspaper industry (though results for all industries were not available at the time of this writing).^[9]

In 2011 congress finally responded to repeated calls for the United States government to pass an "Air Passenger Bill of Rights" to provide specific requirements about what must happen to air passengers in certain conditions.^[10] The push for the bill stemmed from several high profile passenger strandings over the last several years. On April 25, 2011, the Enhancing Airline Passenger Protections, "76 Federal Regulation 23110" rule was enacted.^[11] Amongst other items, the rule includes raising the minimum "denied boarding compensation" to customers with valid tickets yet still not allowed to board the aircraft. The legislation further penalizes airlines up to $27,500 a passenger if left stranded aboard an aircraft, on a tarmac for more than three hours.^[12] In 2010, the largest trade associations representing airline management interests before Capitol Hill, Airlines for America and the Regional Airline Association, opposed this legislation stating that they could self-regulate themselves and they already had begun implementing systems by which to mitigate any tarmac delays.^[13][14] Later American Eagle, an RAA airline member, was the first airline to be fined under the new legislation. A total settlement including fines and compensation paid to passengers totaled $800,000 for tarmac delays incurred in Chicago in May of 2011.^[12]

Problems and controversy[link]

The purpose behind government regulation is to create a stable industry.^[15] The number of major carriers in the United States fell from six in 1978 (United, American, Delta, Eastern, TWA, and Pan Am) to three by 1991 (United, American, and Delta). Since the year 2000 every major airline has filed for bankruptcy at least once. US Airways has filed twice in the same number of years.^[16] The destabilizing effects of privatization were felt immediately and have become worse as time has passed. Although finding solutions to some problems, airline deregulation has created strongly polarizing results. Along with a 40% drop in airfares since deregulation in 1978, airline employees have seen up to a 40% drop in income, affecting approximately 545,000 American workers.^[17] Although the gains of economic liberalization have been substantial for the traveling public and airline executives,^[18] fundamental problems brought on by deregulation continue to plague the industry and its workers.

Even though it's been more than thirty years since deregulation, some of these massive adjustments imposed at the end of a half century of regulation are still being considered transitional problems in their effect by the champions of privatization. Before deregulation, airline oligopolies received returns on capital that were profitable for the company, its executives and its employees, but these returns factored in costs that would not necessarily exist in a competitive market.^{[citation needed]} For example, the airlines' unionized workforce, strengthened under regulation and held in place by the Railway Labor Act (RLA), protected worker salaries, keeping them commensurate to the level of education, experience, risk-factor and time away from home. Instead of a traditional lockout, since deregulation airline executive management has used the laws of bankruptcy as an "ultimate weapon".^[19] Labor unions view this as union-busting, allowing management to throw out contracts already agreed upon while still receiving exorbitant bonuses themselves, regardless of work quality.^[20] In doing so, airline executive management has created what many are calling the great race to the bottom^[21] with one company filing for bankruptcy after the next, leaving only those who have not paying their employes what was contractually agreed upon.^[22]

Captain Chesley Sullenberger, hero of The Miracle on the Hudson

Thus, former airline pilot and hero of The miracle on the hudson, Chesley Sullenberger, has argued before the United States Congress that the U.S. is beginning to realize an industry wide brain drain from the occupation of airline transport pilot.^[23] Adding that:

.

Various solutions have been proposed, including, for the first time since 1978, federal control over some of the prices charged and routes served by major airlines^[27] with a view of increasing price and cost competition.^[7]

Ultimately deregulation has certainly provided some financial benefits to the average air traveler. Economists from the Brookings Institution^[28], a conservative think tank,^[29] and George Mason University^[30] have proven that indeed consumers save thanks to the lower fares resulting from a competitive airline marketplace. Specifically:^[31]

- Taken from the Cleveland & Price Study, 1999^[32]

Conversely, in a June 2008 former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall stated,

Successful Airline deregulation in Europe[link]

The economic liberalisation of air travel was part of a series of deregulation moves based on the growing realization that a politically controlled economy served no continuing public interest. U.S. deregulation has been part of a greater global airline liberalization trend, especially in Asia, Latin America, and the EU. The effects of liberalization in Europe are undoubtedly quite different in scope and magnitude than in the US.

When the architects of the European Union were devising ways to bring the continent’s nations closer together, they probably didn’t think much about airlines. But few businesses have contributed more to cross-border interaction among Europe’s 450m citizens.

From 1993 to 1997, the European Union phased in a continent-wide open skies regime that’s dramatically lowered fares, expanded access and boosted tourism, commerce and movement within the now 25-member market. Perhaps most remarkably, these developments haven’t ravaged the fortunes of employees or destroyed the financial performance of airlines to the same degree they have in North America. While airlines like Sabena have died and workers like those at Swissair suffered, many of the continent’s largest airlines avoided the sweeping restructuring that their American counterparts are still undertaking. Many carriers are hiring and both legacy and low-cost airlines are making money.

In many ways, Europe is a dream market for airlines. Average household incomes are high, workers receive long holiday breaks and high petrol taxes encourage people to travel by air rather than car. Moreover, the continent is dotted with culturally-rich cities that tourists love to visit and pleasant-weather beaches that crowd with vacationers during summers. Many Europeans even have second homes in other E.U. countries.

No group of airlines has better taken advantage of these favorable market characteristics than the low-cost carriers spawned by deregulation. Not all are profitable or sustainable—as many as 60 still exist in various niches throughout the continent—but the biggest and the best are carrying enormous volumes of traffic. The European Low-Fares Airline Association, an advocacy group, says Europe’s LCCs now transport more than 100m passengers a year, about as many as American Airlines. And many LCCs serve a large number of cities.^[34]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Bailey, E. E.,(1992), Airline Deregulation Confronting the Paradoxes, Regulation: The Cato Review of Business and Government 15, No. 3. [16]
• Goetz, A. R., Sutton, J. C., (1997), The Geography of Deregulation in the U.S. Airline Industry, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 87, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 238–262, [17]
• Good, D. H., Roller L., R. C. Sickles (1993), US Airline Deregulation: Implications for European Transport, The Economic Journal, Vol. 103, No. 419., pp. 1028–1041.
• Kahn, A. E. (1988), Surprises of Airline Deregulation, American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 78, no. 2: 316-22.
• Morrison, S., Winston, C. (1987), The Economic Effects of Airline Deregulation, Studies in the Regulation of Economic Activity, Brookings.
• Morrison, S., Winston, C. (1995), The Evolution of the Airline Industry, Brookings Institution Press.
• Poole, R. W. Jr., Butler V., (1999), Airline Deregulation: The Unfinished Revolution, Regulation, vol. 22, no. 1, Spring 1999, pp. 8.,[18]
• Smith Jr F. L., Cox B., Airline Deregulation, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, Liberty Fund Inc, 2. Edition, 2007, [19]
• Stevenson, R. W. (1995), Still Worlds Apart on Air Fares, New York Times, December 1995
• Thierer, A. D. (1998), 20th Anniversary of Airline Deregulation: Couse for Celebration, Not Re-Regulation, The Heritage Foundation, [20]
• Johnsson, Julie, Airline industry the worst in customer ratings, Chicago Tribune, May 20, 2008, [21]
• American Customer Satisfaction Index, Scores by Industry, Sep 14, 2009, [22]
• Martin, Hugo, Support is growing for a fliers' bill of rights, Sep 12, 2009, [23]

External links[link]

• http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Dereg/Tran8.htm
• http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AirlineDeregulation.html
• http://www.dot.gov

Ralph Nader
Nader speaking at BYU's Alternate Commencement
Personal details
Born	(1934-02-27) February 27, 1934 (age 78) Winsted, Connecticut, U.S.
Political party	Independent
Other political affiliations	Green (affiliated non-member) Reform (affiliated non-member) Peace & Freedom (affiliated non-member) Natural Law (affiliated non-member) Populist Party of Maryland (created to support him in 2004) Vermont Progressive Party (affiliated non-member)
Alma mater	Princeton University, Harvard University
Occupation	Attorney, consumer advocate, and political activist
Religion	Eastern Orthodox Christian[1][2]
Signature
Website	nader.org
Military service
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1959

Ralph Nader ( /ˈneɪdər/; born February 27, 1934)^[3][4] is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government.^[5]

Nader came to prominence in 1965 with the publication of his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a critique of the safety record of American automobile manufacturers in general, and most famously the Chevrolet Corvair. In 1999, an NYU panel of journalists ranked Unsafe at Any Speed 38th among the top 100 pieces of journalism of the 20th century.^[6]

Nader is a six-time candidate for President of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. Some people claim that Nader acted as a spoiler in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, while others, including Nader, dispute this claim.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]}

Background and early career[link]

Nader in 1975

Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. His parents, Nathra and Rose (née Bouziane) Nader, were immigrants from Lebanon^[13] and members of the Maronite Church.^[1] His family's native language is Arabic,^[13] and he has spoken it along with English since childhood. His sister, Laura Nader, is an anthropologist. His father worked in a textile mill and later owned a bakery and restaurant where he talked politics with his customers.^[14]

Nader graduated from The Gilbert School in 1951, followed by Princeton University four years later and then Harvard Law School.^[15] He served six months on active duty in the United States Army in 1959, then became a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a professor of history and government at the University of Hartford from 1961 to 1963. In 1964, Nader moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan and also advised a United States Senate subcommittee on car safety. Nader has served on the faculty at the American University Washington College of Law.^[16][when?]

Automobile safety activism[link]

Nader's first consumer safety articles appeared in the Harvard Law Record, a student publication of Harvard Law School, but he first criticized the automobile industry in an article he wrote for The Nation in 1959 called "The Safe Car You Can't Buy."^[17]

Ralph Nader lectures at Florida State University, 1980s

In 1965, Nader wrote Unsafe at Any Speed, a book which claimed that many American automobiles were unsafe. The first chapter, "The Sporty Corvair - The One-Car Accident," pertained to the Corvair manufactured by the Chevrolet division of General Motors, which had been involved in accidents involving spins and rollovers. There were over 100 lawsuits pending against GM in connection with accidents involving the popular compact car. These lawsuits provided the initial material for Nader's investigations into the safety of the car.^[18]

A 1972 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration safety commission report conducted by Texas A&M University concluded that the 1960–1963 Corvairs possessed no greater potential for loss of control than its contemporaries in extreme situations.^[19] Additionally, according to Crash Course by Paul Ingrassia, Corvairs were environmentally friendly due to their smaller size and lighter weight, and Nader's safety-focused activism negatively affected the cause for eco-efficiency.^[20] However, former GM executive John DeLorean asserted in On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors (1979) that Nader's criticisms were valid.^[21]

In early March 1966, several media outlets, including The New Republic and The New York Times, reported that GM had tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones and investigate his past and hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations.^[22][23] Nader sued the company for invasion of privacy and settled the case for $425,000. Nader's lawsuit against GM was ultimately decided by the New York Court of Appeals, whose opinion in the case expanded tort law to cover "overzealous surveillance."^[24] Nader used the proceeds from the lawsuit to start the pro-consumer Center for Study of Responsive Law.

Nader's advocacy of automobile safety and the publicity generated by the publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, along with concern over escalating nationwide traffic fatalities, contributed to the unanimous passage of the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. The act established the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and marked a historic shift in responsibility for automobile safety from the consumer to the government. The legislation mandated a series of safety features for automobiles, beginning with safety belts and stronger windshields.^[25][26][27]

Activism[link]

Hundreds of young activists, inspired by Nader's work, came to DC to help him with other projects.^{[citation needed]} They came to be known as "Nader's Raiders" and, under Nader, investigated government corruption, publishing dozens of books with their results:

• Nader's Raiders (Federal Trade Commission)
• Vanishing Air (National Air Pollution Control Administration)
• The Chemical Feast (Food and Drug Administration)
• The Interstate Commerce Omission (Interstate Commerce Commission)
• Old Age (nursing homes)
• The Water Lords (water pollution)
• Who Runs Congress? (Congress)
• Whistle Blowing (punishment of whistle blowers)
• The Big Boys (corporate executives)
• Collision Course (Federal Aviation Administration)
• No Contest (corporate lawyers)
• Destroy the Forest (Destruction of ecosystems worldwide)

Nader speaks out against the Iraq War at a September 15, 2007, anti-war protest

In 1971, Nader co-founded the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Public Citizen with fellow public interest lawyer Alan Morrison as an umbrella organization for these projects. Today, Public Citizen has over 225,000 members ^[28] and investigates congressional, health, environmental, economic and other issues. Nader wrote, "The consumer must be protected at times from his own indiscretion and vanity."^[29]

In the 1970s and 1980s Nader was a key leader in the antinuclear power movement. "By 1976, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who later became allied with the environmental movement, 'stood as the titular head of opposition to nuclear energy'."^[30][31] The Critical Mass Energy Project was formed by Nader in 1974 as a national anti-nuclear umbrella group.^[32] It was probably the largest national anti-nuclear group in the United States, with several hundred local affiliates and an estimated 200,000 supporters.^[33] The organization's main efforts were directed at lobbying activities and providing local groups with scientific and other resources to campaign against nuclear power.^[32][34] Nader advocates the complete elimination of nuclear energy in favor of solar, tidal, wind and geothermal, citing environmental, worker safety, migrant labor, national security, disaster preparedness, foreign policy, government accountability and democratic governance issues to bolster his position.^[35]

Nader was also a prominent supporter of the Airline Deregulation Act.^[36]

Ecology[link]

Nader spent much of 1970 pursuing a campaign to educate the public about ecology. Nader said that the rivers and lakes in America were extremely contaminated. He joked that "Lake Erie is now so contaminated you're advised to have a typhoid inoculation before you set sail on some parts of the lake."^[37]

He also added that river's state of contamination affected humans because many residents get their water supply from these contaminated rivers and lakes. "Cleveland takes its water supply from deep in the center of Lake Erie. How much longer is it going to get away with that?"^[37]

Nader told how some rivers are contaminated so badly that they can be lit on fire. "The Buffalo River is so full of petroleum residuals, it's been classified an official fire hazard by the City of Buffalo. We have the phenomenon now known as flammable water. The Cuyahoga River outside of Cleveland did catch fire last June, burning a base and some bridges. I often wonder what was in the minds of the firemen as they rushed to the scene of the action and pondered how to put this fire out. But we're heading in river after river: Connecticut River, Hudson River, Mississippi River, you name it. There's some rivers right outside of Boston, New Hampshire and Maine where if a person fell into 'em, I think he would dissolve before he drowned."^[37]

Non-profit organizations[link]

Throughout his career, Nader has started or inspired a variety of nonprofit organizations,with most of which he has maintained close associations :

In 1980, Nader resigned as director of Public Citizen to work on other projects, lecturing on the growing "imperialism" of multinational corporations and of a dangerous convergence of corporate and government power.^[38]

Presidential campaigns[link]

Ralph Nader has been a frequent contender in U.S. presidential elections, always as an independent candidate or a third party nominee. His activism on behalf of third parties goes back to 1958, when he wrote an article for the Harvard Law Record critiquing U.S. electoral law's systemic discrimination against them.^[39]

Presidential campaign history[link]

1972[link]

Ralph Nader's name appeared in the press as a potential candidate for president for the first time in 1971, when he was offered the opportunity to run as the presidential candidate for the New Party, a progressive split-off from the Democratic Party in 1972. Chief among his advocates was author Gore Vidal, who touted a 1972 Nader presidential campaign in a front-page article in Esquire magazine in 1971.^[40] Psychologist Alan Rockway organized a "draft Ralph Nader for President" campaign in Florida on the New Party's behalf.^[41] Nader declined their offer to run that year; the New Party ultimately joined with the People's Party in running Benjamin Spock in the 1972 Presidential election.^[42][43][44] Spock had hoped Nader in particular would run, getting "some of the loudest applause of the evening" when mentioning him at the University of Alabama.^[45] Spock went on to try to recruit Nader for the party among over 100 others, and indicated he would be "delighted" to be replaced by any of them even after he accepted the nomination himself.^[46] Nader received one vote for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

1992[link]

Nader stood in as a write-in for "none of the above" in both the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic and Republican Primaries^[47] and received 3,054 of the 170,333 Democratic votes and 3,258 of the 177,970 Republican votes cast.^[48] He was also a candidate in the 1992 Massachusetts Democratic Primary, where he appeared at the top of the ballot (in some areas, he appeared on the ballot as an independent).

1996[link]

Nader was drafted as a candidate for President of the United States on the Green Party ticket during the 1996 presidential election. He was not formally nominated by the Green Party USA, which was, at the time, the largest national Green group; instead he was nominated independently by various state Green parties (in some states, he appeared on the ballot as an independent). However, many activists in the Green Party USA worked actively to campaign for Nader that year. Nader qualified for ballot status in 22 states,^[49] garnering 685,297 votes or 0.71% of the popular vote (fourth place overall),^[50] although the effort did make significant organizational gains for the party. He refused to raise or spend more than $5,000 on his campaign, presumably to avoid meeting the threshold for Federal Elections Commission reporting requirements; the unofficial Draft Nader committee could (and did) spend more than that, but the committee was legally prevented from coordinating in any way with Nader himself.

Nader received some criticism from gay rights supporters for calling gay rights "gonad politics" and stating that he was not interested in dealing with such matters.^[51] However, more recently, Nader has come out in support of same-sex marriage.^[52]

His 1996 running mates included: Anne Goeke (nine states), Deborah Howes (Oregon), Muriel Tillinghast (New York), Krista Paradise (Colorado), Madelyn Hoffman (New Jersey), Bill Boteler (Washington, D.C.), and Winona LaDuke (California and Texas).^[53]

2000[link]

In the 2006 documentary An Unreasonable Man, Nader describes how he was unable to get the views of his public interest groups heard in Washington, even by the Clinton Administration. Nader cites this as one of the primary reasons that he decided to actively run in the 2000 election as candidate of the Green Party, which had been formed in the wake of his 1996 campaign.

Nader's supporters, with Christopher Hitchens speaking, protest his exclusion from the televised debates in 2000.

In June 2000 The Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) organized the national nominating convention that took place in Denver, Colorado, at which Greens nominated Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke to be their parties` candidates for President and Vice President.^[54][55]

On July 9, the Vermont Progressive Party nominated Nader, giving him ballot access in the state.^[56] On August 12, the United Citizens Party of South Carolina chose Ralph Nader as its presidential nominee, giving him a ballot line in the state.^[57]

In October 2000, at the largest Super Rally of his campaign,^[58] held in New York City's Madison Square Garden, 15,000 people paid $20 each^[59] to hear Mr. Nader speak. Nader's campaign rejected both parties as institutions dominated by corporate interests, stating that Al Gore and George W. Bush were "Tweedledee and Tweedledum". A long list of notable celebrities spoke and performed at the event including Susan Sarandon, Ani DiFranco, Ben Harper, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Eddie Vedder and Patti Smith. The campaign also had some prominent union help: The California Nurses Association and the United Electrical Workers endorsed his candidacy and campaigned for him.^[60]

In 2000, Nader and his running mate Winona LaDuke received 2,883,105 votes, for 2.74 percent of the popular vote (third place overall),^[61] missing the 5 percent needed to qualify the Green Party for federally distributed public funding in the next election, yet qualifying the Greens for ballot status in many states.

Nader's actual influence on the 2000 election is the subject of considerable discussion, and there is no consensus on Nader's impact on the outcome. Nader's votes in New Hampshire and Florida vastly exceeded the difference in votes between Gore and Bush, as did the votes of all alternative candidates.^[62] Exit polls showed New Hampshire staying close, and within the margin of error without Nader^[63] as national exit polls showed Nader's supporters choosing Gore over Bush by a large margin,^[64] well outside the margin of error. Winning either state would have given Gore the presidency, and while critics claim this shows Nader tipped the election to Bush, Nader has called that claim "a mantra — an assumption without data."^[65] Nader supporters argued that Gore was primarily responsible for his own loss.^[66] Nader critic Eric Alterman disagreed, writing: "One person in the world could have prevented Bush's election with his own words on the Election Day 2000."^[67] Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn cited Gore's failure to win over progressive voters in Florida who chose Nader, and congratulated those voters: "Who would have thought the Sunshine State had that many progressives in it, with steel in their spine and the spunk to throw Eric Alterman's columns into the trash can?"^[68] Still others argued that even if Nader's constituents could have made the swing difference between Gore and Bush, the votes Nader garnered were not from the Democrats, but from Democrats, Republicans, and discouraged voters who would not have voted otherwise.^[69]

The "spoiler" controversy[link]

In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader, both in his book Crashing the Party and on his website, states: "In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all."^[70] (which would net a 13%, 12,665 votes, advantage for Gore over Bush.) Michael Moore at first argued that Florida was so close that votes for any of seven other candidates could also have switched the results,^[8] but in 2004 joined the view that Nader had helped make Bush president.^[10][71] When asked about claims of being a spoiler, Nader typically points to the controversial Supreme Court ruling that halted a Florida recount, Gore's loss in his home state of Tennessee, and the "quarter million Democrats who voted for Bush in Florida."^[72][73]

A study in 2002 by the Progressive Review found no correlation in pre-election polling numbers for Nader when compared to those for Gore. In other words, most of the changes in pre-election polling reflect movement between Bush and Gore rather than Gore and Nader, and they conclude from this that Nader was not responsible for Gore's loss.^[74]

An analysis conducted by Harvard Professor B.C. Burden in 2005 showed Nader did "play a pivotal role in determining who would become president following the 2000 election", but that:

"Contrary to Democrats’ complaints, Nader was not intentionally trying to throw the election. A spoiler strategy would have caused him to focus disproportionately on the most competitive states and markets with the hopes of being a key player in the outcome. There is no evidence that his appearances responded to closeness. He did, apparently, pursue voter support, however, in a quest to receive 5% of the popular vote."^[7]

However, Jonathan Chait of The American Prospect and The New Republic notes that Nader did indeed focus on swing states disproportionately during the waning days of the campaign, and by doing so jeopardized his own chances of achieving the 5% of the vote he was aiming for.

Then there was the debate within the Nader campaign over where to travel in the waning days of the campaign. Some Nader advisers urged him to spend his time in uncontested states such as New York and California. These states – where liberals and leftists could entertain the thought of voting Nader without fear of aiding Bush – offered the richest harvest of potential votes. But, Martin writes, Nader – who emerges from this account as the house radical of his own campaign – insisted on spending the final days of the campaign on a whirlwind tour of battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. In other words, he chose to go where the votes were scarcest, jeopardizing his own chances of winning 5 percent of the vote, which he needed to gain federal funds in 2004.^[75]

When Nader, in a letter to environmentalists, attacked Gore for "his role as broker of environmental voters for corporate cash," and "the prototype for the bankable, Green corporate politician," and what he called a string of broken promises to the environmental movement, Sierra Club president Carl Pope sent an open letter to Nader, dated 27 October 2000, defending Al Gore's environmental record and calling Nader's strategy "irresponsible."^[76] He wrote:

You have also broken your word to your followers who signed the petitions that got you on the ballot in many states. You pledged you would not campaign as a spoiler and would avoid the swing states. Your recent campaign rhetoric and campaign schedule make it clear that you have broken this pledge... Please accept that I, and the overwhelming majority of the environmental movement in this country, genuinely believe that your strategy is flawed, dangerous and reckless.^[77]

2004[link]

Nader announced on December 24, 2003, that he would not seek the Green Party's nomination for president in 2004, but did not rule out running as an independent candidate.

Meeting with John Kerry[link]

Ralph Nader and Democratic candidate John Kerry held a widely publicized meeting early in the 2004 Presidential campaign, which Nader described in An Unreasonable Man. Nader said that John Kerry wanted to work to win Nader's support and the support of Nader's voters. Nader then provided more than 20 pages of issues that he felt were important and he "put them on the table" for John Kerry. According to Nader the issues covered topics ranging from environmental, labor, healthcare, tax reform, corporate crime, campaign finance reform and various consumer protection issues. Nader reported that he asked John Kerry to choose any three of the issues and highlight them in his campaign and if Kerry would do this, he would refrain from the race. For example, Nader recommended taking up corporate welfare, corporate crime—which could attract many Republican voters, and labor law reform—which was felt Bush could never support given the corporate funding of his campaign.^[78] Several days passed and Kerry failed to adopt any of Nader's issues as benchmarks of his campaign, so on February 22, 2004, Nader announced on NBC that he would indeed run for president as an independent, saying, "There's too much power and wealth in too few hands."

A Kerry aide who had attended the meeting had a different recollection. "He made more the point that he had the ability to go after Bush in ways that we could not, He did not at all say to Kerry, 'I'm here to make you better on things.' That was not his tone at all."

The New York Times quoted Nader saying after the meeting "Gore was petrified wood, He was stiff as a board, he didn't want to have these kinds of meetings. He didn't want to have meetings like this when he was vice president three years before the election. Kerry is much more open." Nader himself said he had deliberately steered clear of disagreement, telling the Times, "When you go in looking for common ground, it takes up most of the time, doesn't it?"^[79]

The campaign[link]

Nader's 2004 campaign ran on a platform consistent with the Green Party's positions on major issues, such as opposition to the war in Iraq. He has detailed the legal reasons George W. Bush and Dick Cheney fit the criteria for war criminals, and why they should have been immediately impeached.^[80]

Due to concerns about a possible spoiler effect as in 2000, many Democrats urged Nader to abandon his 2004 candidacy. The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, stated that Nader had a "distinguished career, fighting for working families," and that McAuliffe "would hate to see part of his legacy being that he got us eight years of George Bush." Nader replied to this, in filmed interviews for An Unreasonable Man, by arguing that, "Voting for a candidate of one's choice is a Constitutional right, and the Democrats who are asking me not to run are, without question, seeking to deny the Constitutional rights of voters who are, by law, otherwise free to choose to vote for me." Nader's 2004 campaign theme song was "If You Gotta Ask" by Liquid Blue.

In May 2009, in a new book, Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, Theresa Amato, who was Nader's national campaign manager in 2000 and 2004, alleged that McAuliffe offered to pay off Nader to stop campaigning in certain states in 2004. This was confirmed by Nader, and neither McAuliffe nor his spokeswoman disputed the claim.^[81]

In the 2004 campaign, Democrats such as Howard Dean and Terry McAuliffe asked that Nader return money donated to his campaign by Republicans who were well-known Bush supporters, such as billionaire Richard Egan.^[82][83] Nader's reaction to the request was to refuse to return any donations and he charged that the Democrats were attempting to smear him.^[82] Nader's vice-presidential running mate, Peter Camejo, supported the return of the money if it could be proved that "the aim of the wealthy GOP donors was to peel votes from Kerry."^[82] According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Nader defended his keeping of the donations by saying that wealthy contributors "are human beings too."^[82]

Nader received 463,655 votes, for 0.38 percent of the popular vote, placing him in third place overall.^[84]

2008[link]

Nader campaigning in October 2008

Wikinews has related news: Ralph Nader enters US presidential race as independent Ralph Nader calls out Democrats for financial bailout

In February 2007, Nader criticized Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton as "a panderer and a flatterer."^[85] Asked on CNN Late Edition news program if he would run in 2008, Nader replied, "It's really too early to say...."^[86] Asked during a radio appearance to describe the former First Lady, Nader said, "Flatters, panders, coasting, front-runner, looking for a coronation ... She has no political fortitude."^[87] Some Greens started a campaign to draft Nader as their party's 2008 presidential candidate.^[88]

After some consideration, Nader announced on February 24, 2008, that he would run for President as an independent. His vice-presidential candidate was Matt Gonzalez.^[89]

Nader received 738,475 votes, for 0.56 percent of the popular vote, earning him a third place position in the overall election results.^[90]

Personal life[link]

Nader was raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church.^[1] He has never married. Karen Croft, a writer who worked for Nader in the late 1970s at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, once asked him if he had ever considered getting married. She reports: "He said that at a certain point he had to decide whether to have a family or to have a career, that he couldn't have both. That's the kind of person he is. He couldn't have a wife—he's up all night reading the Congressional Record."^[91]

Personal finances[link]

According to the mandatory fiscal disclosure report that he filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2000, Nader owned more than $3 million worth of stocks and mutual fund shares; his single largest holding was more than $1 million worth of stock in Cisco Systems, Inc. He also held between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of shares in the Magellan Fund.^[92] Nader said he owned no car and owned no real estate directly in 2000, and said that he lived on US $25,000 a year, giving most of his stock earnings to many of the over four dozen non-profit organizations he had founded.^[93][94]

Television appearances[link]

In 1988, Nader appeared on Sesame Street as "a person in your neighborhood." The verse of the song began "A consumer advocate is a person in your neighborhood." Nader's appearance on the show was memorable because it was the only time that the grammar of the last line of the song—"A person who you meet each day"—was questioned and changed in the show. Nader refused to sing the prescriptively improper line, and so a compromise was reached, resulting in Ralph Nader singing the last line as a solo with the modified words: "A person whom you meet each day."^[95] In the same episode, Nader tests "Bob"'s sweater, with permission, and destroys it, telling Bob "Your aunt . . . knitted you a lemon!"

He hosted an episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live in 1977 and appeared in a 2000 episode.^{[citation needed]}

He was interviewed on Da Ali G Show by Sacha Baron Cohen.^{[citation needed]}

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Nader appeared on NBC's Meet The Press, CNBC with John Harwood, CNN with Rick Sanchez, PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Fox News Channel with Shepard Smith.^[96] He was interviewed by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 2008. Also that year he appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher. In 2011, he appeared multiple times on the Fox Business Network primetime show Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano, including a January 19, 2011 joint appearance with Ron Paul.^{[citation needed]}

Works[link]

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Politics portal

• Shafeek Nader
• Critical Mass (Anti-nuclear group)

Notes[link]

• An Unreasonable Man (2006). An Unreasonable Man is a documentary film about Ralph Nader that appeared at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
• Burden, Barry C. (2005). Ralph Nader's Campaign Strategy in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election 2005, American Politics Research 33:672-99.
• Ralph Nader: Up Close This film blends archival footage and scenes of Nader and his staff at work in Washington with interviews with Nader's family, friends and adversaries, as well as Nader himself. Written, directed and produced by Mark Litwak and Tiiu Lukk, 1990, color, 72 mins. Narration by Studs Terkel. Broadcast on PBS. Winner, Sinking Creek Film Festival; Best of Festival, Baltimore Int'l Film Festival; Silver Plaque, Chicago Int'l Film Festival, Silver Apple, National Educational Film & Video Festival.
• Bear, Greg, "Eon" — the novel includes a depiction of a future group called the "Naderites" who follow Ralph Nader's humanistic teachings.
• Martin, Justin. Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon. Perseus Publishing, 2002. ISBN 0-7382-0563-X

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• What Was Ralph Nader Thinking? by Jurgen Vsych, Wroughten Books, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9749879-2-7
• Abuse of Trust: A Report on Ralph Nader's Network by Dan Burt, 1982. ISBN 978-0-89526-661-3
• Citizen Nader by Charles McCarry Saturday Review Press, 1972 ISBN 0-8415-0163-7
• The Investigation of Ralph Nader by Thomas Whiteside 1972.

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (March 2012)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ralph Nader

• Nader.org official website
• Nader / Gonzalez '08 campaign website
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Booknotes interview with Nader on Crashing the Party, February 3, 2002.
  • In Depth interview with Nader, August 1, 2010
• Ralph Nader on Charlie Rose
• Ralph Nader at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Ralph Nader in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Ralph Nader collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Ralph Nader at the Notable Names Database

Articles and interviews

• Kugel, Allison (May 14, 2008). "Ralph Nader Goes to Washington... Again – The PR.com Interview". PR.com. http://www.pr.com/article/1100. 
• "How Winstedites Kept Their Integrity," article by Nader in the September 1963 issue of The Freeman
• Ralph Nader Goes to Washington... Again – The PR.com Interview
• Digital History Ralph Nader
• Nader, Rare Among Candidates May 5, 2008