From Professor Andrew Spiropoulos's column addressing the worsening legal environment in states like Oklahoma:

Oklahoma’s lawsuit-reform debate has sadly revealed that honorable and well-meaning public officials like Governor Brad Henry and Attorney General Drew Edmondson, when push comes to shove, side with the most reactionary elements of the trial bar.

But this year’s debate revealed a problem even more disturbing than opposition to legal reform. Mr. Edmondson has imported to Oklahoma a new model of the office of attorney general that is destructive both to the rule of law and to the welfare of the state...

In the 1990s, a new model of the office emerged. Political sharks like New York’s attorney general (and now governor) Eliot Spitzer realized they could use their power to file lawsuits and criminal charges to bludgeon large corporations into big settlements that would make for good headlines. They started with unpopular defendants like the tobacco companies and, once drawing blood, moved on to any other industry with big money and bad publicity. Along the way, these shrewd politicians discovered a neat deal: they could hire their plaintiff lawyer friends to help bring these lawsuits. The lawyers would reap millions from the extorted settlements and then (coincidentally, I’m sure) make large campaign contributions to the attorney general’s next campaign.

You can read the rest of the column here – we’ll let it speak for itself.