American consumer activist, renowned for spearheading a
rise in consumer protection since the 1960s.
A lawyer trained at Princeton University and Harvard
Law School, Ralph Nader made his first foray into the sphere
of consumer advocacy with the appearance of the seminal
work Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965. This book, the first of several he has written, induced a change in the market philosophy in the United States from “buyer beware” to more of a
focus on consumer rights.
Before Nader began his campaigns, corporate aggression
and government indifference had seriously eroded accountability of businesses to consumers. Nader was responsible
for inducing policy changes during the 1960s and early
1970s in such areas as automobile safety, food and drug
quality, pesticides, water pollution, energy consumption,
cigarette content, and rates charged by the legal profession.
He has also campaigned against government subsidies of
nuclear power, aircraft development, and synthetic fuels.
His main approach is to empower the consumer side of the
market economy, which otherwise would remain fragmented and powerless, by developing citizen advocacy
groups. These groups rely on a combination of publicity
and court action to pressure firms and government bodies
into mending their ways.
To encourage corporations and government agencies to
reestablish their accountability, Nader has adopted the strategy of confronting corporate power via consumer activism
and the exposing of information about the issue. This approach succeeded in 1974, for example, when Congress passed
amendments to the Freedom of Information Act that opened
up a wide variety of government data to citizen scrutiny. In
2002, Nader was the presidential candidate for the Green
Party, an environmentally minded group, but he failed to win
more votes than either major-party candidate.
Nader’s legacy to American policymaking has caused
many substantial firms and the government, knowing that
their actions may be exposed to public scrutiny, to become
obliged to more fully consider the interests of ordinary citizens. Newspapers and other media are more empowered to
investigate business and government, holding them to account for their behavior.
—Tony Ward
References
Bollier, David. Citizen Action and Other Big Ideas: A History
of Ralph Nader and the Modern Consumer Movement.
Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Responsive
Law, 1991.