Laws and the Liars Who Write Them

It got basically no coverage yesterday (North Korea has nukes! Charles marrying Camilla! Not necessarily in that order!), but the Senate passed a significant class-action lawsuit bill. The legislation forces many class-action suits out of states and into federal courts, where judges (many, many, many of them appointed by Republicans, simply because they've held the White House for the majority of the last 30 years) are less sympathetic, and less moved by local concerns. In addition, the bill has an odd flaw in it: A Supreme Court ruling from the 80's barred federal courts from considering cases where the affected states have materially different laws, which means many of these lawsuits will be thrown out as neither state nor federal courts are allowed to deal with them.

It's not so much that the bill's bad in concept as that it's poorly designed. Legislation shouldn't have gaping flaws like that, at least not unless it's being passed more to satisfy an interest group and less to change policy. But that couldn't have happened here, right?

Update: Via Brad Plumer, Sam Heldman has more.