[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[July 30, 2000]
[Pages 1523-1527]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Association of Trial Lawyers of America in Chicago
July 30, 2000

    President Middleton, after 
your remarks, if I had any sense, I wouldn't say anything. I'd just sit 
down. [Laughter] I want to thank you, and thank you, Fred Baron, my longtime friend, for inviting me here. There are so 
many of you here that I've had the honor of working with over the last 
7\1/2\ years, sometimes even longer.
    I am proud of the fact that this organization and its members have 
been standing up for the rights of wronged and injured Americans since 
1946. Now, that was before we had the EPA or the Consumer Product Safety 
Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or the 
Clean Air or Clean Water Act. It's important to remember that those 
protections and many others were written into the law after years of 
lawsuits that highlighted the problems we faced and wrongs that were 
done.
    What is the lesson of all this? That the public interest requires 
both reasonable access to the courts and responsible action by Congress. 
We have done what we could in the last 7\1/2\ years to move toward 
accountability in the courts on three issues--tobacco, guns, and 
patients' rights--and to keep the American people's availability of a 
civil justice system alive and well.
    But only Congress can pass laws that will hold tobacco companies, 
gun manufacturers, and health plans accountable for the choices they 
make and the consequences of those choices. So I hope Congress will also 
help us because I know that everybody in this room agrees that an ounce 
of prevention in law is worth a million dollars in curative lawsuits.
    We've worked for 7\1/2\ years now to protect our children from the 
dangers of tobacco, thanks in large measure to the leadership of Vice 
President Gore, and Senator Dick 
Durbin from Illinois, who has been with me 
through much of this day. Now the Justice Department is leading our 
efforts to get tobacco companies to repay

[[Page 1524]]

the Government for the costs of tobacco-related illnesses. But the 
Supreme Court has told Congress the ball is in its court. It must act to 
give FDA tobacco regulations the force of law.
    I have asked Congress to do that and to support, not undermine, the 
Justice Department's lawsuit. I hope that the Congress, and especially 
the Republicans in Congress, will be able to break an addiction to the 
tobacco lobby and meet their responsibilities to the American people.
    I am grateful beyond measure that the crime rate has dropped in this 
country to a 25-year low, that gun crime is down by 35 percent over the 
last 7\1/2\ years, but I don't think anybody in America believes that 
we're safe enough as a nation or that there's not more we can do--more 
we can to do to put more police on the street in dangerous 
neighborhoods; more we can do to keep our kids off the streets in after-
school programs, summer school programs, summer job programs, mentoring 
programs; and more we can do to keep guns out the hands of criminals and 
children.
    I've asked Congress to give us commonsense gun legislation, measures 
to close the gun show loophole in the Brady background check law, to 
require child safety locks for all handguns, to ban the importation of 
large capacity ammunition clips. I've also endorsed requiring people who 
buy handguns to get a photo ID license, just like a driver's license, 
showing that you passed the background check and you know how to use the 
gun safely. So far, no action in Congress, even on the first three 
measures.
    We reached a historic agreement with the Smith & Wesson company to 
build safer guns, a truly astonishing step forward and a brave thing for 
them to do. But the rest of the industry and the gun lobby are trying to 
destroy them for doing it, and they're working hard to make sure that 
they can't keep up their end of the bargain.
    I hope all of them will think again about where their responsibility 
really lies. After all, who honestly has an interest in selling a gun to 
somebody with a criminal record? Who has an interest in selling a gun 
that's not protected when it will be put in some place where a little 
child can find it and cause an accidental death? I hope that we'll see a 
change in attitude there, too, and I hope the American people will have 
the opportunity to make their position on these matters crystal clear in 
November.
    Wherever I go, I heard heartbreaking stories about patients turned 
away from the closest emergency room. The other day I was in Missouri 
with the Governor of that State who signed one 
of the strongest patients' bill of rights in the country at the State 
level, and they still have about a million people in their State who 
aren't covered because of the way the Federal law works.
    And there was this emergency room nurse speaking with us there--or 
it was an emergency nurse who had been also an emergency medical 
technician. It was a man who must have weighed 225 pounds and looked 
like he could bench-press me on a cold day. And this big old burly guy 
got up and practically started crying, talking about someone that he had 
just seen die because they were not permitted to go to the nearest 
emergency room.
    I had a guy the other day tell me a story about getting hit by a car 
and saying that this health plan wouldn't approve his going to the 
nearest emergency room because he hadn't called for permission first. He 
said, ``I was unconscious at the time. I didn't know how to make the 
phone call.'' [Laughter]
    Now, all of you know these are--if you practice in this area, you 
know that this is not just some set of isolated anecdotes. And I believe 
that health care decisions should be made by health care professionals. 
I believe people ought to be able to go to the nearest emergency room. I 
don't believe that people should be forced to change physicians in the 
middle of a treatment, whether it's chemotherapy or having a baby. And I 
think if people get hurt, they ought to have the right to seek redress 
in our courts. That's what the Patients' Bill of Rights does.
    Let me say, as I have said over and over again, this is not a 
partisan issue. Survey after survey after survey has shown that more 
than 70 percent of the American people, whether they identify themselves 
as Republicans or Democrats or independents, support the passage of a 
strong, enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights. This is not a partisan 
issue. This is a special interest issue.
    We passed with a bipartisan vote--a good number of Republicans voted 
for a bill called the Norwood-Dingel bill in the House of 
Representatives, and I am profoundly grateful to everyone who voted for 
that bill in both parties. And then, in the Senate, we came within a 
vote, really, of passing it. We lost it 51-49, and

[[Page 1525]]

if it had gotten 50 votes, then the Vice President could have broken the tie. And as he never tires of 
saying, whenever he votes, we win. [Laughter] He always kids me that he 
has a much better record of legislative success than I do. He never 
loses. Whenever he votes, we win.
    And so I have some hope that we can do this. But this is a huge 
deal, and it goes to the core of what kind of people we are. And I feel 
that I have the right to speak passionately about this because I 
actually have always supported managed care in general. Let me remind 
you of something.
    Your president was telling you 
about what things were like in 1992. In 1992, and for several years 
before that, health care costs had been going up at 3 times the rate of 
inflation. We were then and are now spending about 4 percent more of our 
national income, which is a huge chunk of change, on health care than 
any other country in the world; about 6 percent more than virtually all 
other advanced countries--Canada is 4 percent lower than we are--and yet 
we were the only one that basically had tens of millions of people 
without any health insurance.
    So it was obvious that we needed to manage the system better because 
a lot of the money was just getting away from us. Having said that, you 
cannot allow the management of the system to overcome its fundamental 
purpose, which is to help people get healthy or stay healthy or deal 
with them when they're injured or sick.
    Let me just emphasize, I've talked to a lot of people about this. 
I've talked to a lot of nurses and doctors and people who work in 
insurance companies. I've talked to the 14 representatives of the 14 
HMO's that endorsed our Patients' Bill of Rights, because they 
desperately want to do this, but they don't want to be disadvantaged by 
having all their competitors able to run off and leave them and follow a 
different set of rules.
    And the fundamental problem is, in a lot of these cases, 
particularly on specialist care, is that you have to go through three 
levels before a final decision is made, and the people at the first two 
levels know they'll never get in trouble for saying no. And whenever you 
have a system where someone never gets in trouble for saying no and not 
get in trouble for saying yes, even if yes is plainly the right answer, 
then there needs to be some way people can get redress if they get hurt 
in a system like that. That's the issue. So a right without a remedy is 
just a suggestion. And I think we all know that.
    So we've got to keep working. We might get there this year. We're 
chipping away at it. If we turn one or maybe two to be safe in the 
Senate, we'll be home.
    Now, let me just say one other thing. I couldn't appear before an 
audience of lawyers without mentioning what I consider to be another 
threat to our system of equal justice under law, and that is the 
Senate's slowdown in consideration and confirmation of my nominees to 
our courts, especially to our appellate courts.
    The judges I have appointed have the highest ratings the American 
Bar Association has given out in 40 years. They are also the most 
diverse group ever appointed to the Federal bench. We've shattered the 
myth that diversity and quality don't go hand in hand.
    I also have bent over backwards not to appoint people just because I 
thought that every single ruling would agree with me. And I've probably 
appointed a person or two that some of you didn't like. But I've tried 
to find mainstream judges that would follow the Constitution and be 
faithful to the interest of individual litigants who have rights under 
the law and Constitution of the United States and to be fair and 
balanced to both sides. That's what I have tried to do.
    Now, it is, therefore--because of that record, and there have been 
lots of legal analyses by respected, totally nonpolitical writers saying 
how I have changed the thrust of the court appointments, especially 
appellate court appointments, and my appointees are far less 
ideological, one way or the other, than those of the last two 
administrations. Now, a blue ribbon panel, however, recently found that 
during the 105th Congress, the nominations of women and minorities 
tended to take 2 months--2 months--longer to be considered than those of 
white males, and though they were just as qualified, according to the 
ABA, they tended to be rejected twice as often. I'll give you just 
exhibit A. I've talked about this all over America.
    I nominated a man named Enrique Moreno, a 
highly regarded trial lawyer from El Paso, to the fifth circuit. The 
Texas State judges said he was one of the three best trial lawyers in 
the region. The ABA unanimously rated him well-qualified. He had broad 
support from local

[[Page 1526]]

law enforcement officials and from local Republicans and Democrats. 
Again, it was not a partisan issue. The guy came up out of El Paso, went 
to Harvard, made great grades, made something of himself. Everybody said 
he was qualified--everybody except the two Senators from Texas who said he 
wasn't qualified, no matter what the ABA said, no matter what the Texas 
State judges said, no matter what the local Republicans and Democrats 
said; he's not qualified. Nineteen years in practice isn't enough to 
qualify to make the kind of judgments they have to make. And 
regrettably, none of the other leading Republicans in Texas would even 
ask for him to have a hearing. And so he sits in limbo.
    Look at the fourth circuit in the southeast United States. The 
largest percentage of African-Americans in any Federal circuit are in 
the fourth circuit; 25 percent of the judgeships are vacant. I've been 
trying for 7 years to put an African-American on that court because 
there has never been one in the district with the largest number of 
African-Americans in the entire country. I think it's wrong. And they 
have worked so hard to keep me from doing it that they're willing to 
tolerate a 25 percent vacancy rate.
    Now, keep in mind I never sent anybody up there that wasn't 
qualified. We now have two fine, well-qualified African-Americans 
pending for that circuit, Judge James Wynn of North Carolina and Roger Gregory of Virginia. Neither has even gotten a hearing.
    The Senate has 37 nominations before it now, and 29 of those folks 
have never gotten a hearing. Fifteen have been nominated to fill empty 
seats that the U.S. courts consider judicial emergencies, places where 
our legal business simply isn't being done; 13 of them, including well-
respected litigators like Dolly Gee and first-
rate jurists like Legrome Davis, have been 
waiting more than a year. Judge Helene White 
has been waiting for 3 years.
    Now, if we want our courts to function properly, the Senate ought to 
vote these folks up or down. If they don't like them, vote them down. 
But is the question, can they be competent; will they run a fair and 
effective court if there are criminal trials; will the civil cases be 
tried promptly and fairly; do they believe justice delayed is justice 
denied; or is the problem that they are not sufficiently ideologically 
predictable?
    This is a big issue and a serious precedent. We all want justice to 
be blind, but we know when we have diversity in our courts, just as in 
other aspects of our society, it sharpens our vision and makes us a 
stronger nation. That is a goal ATLA has always set.
    Now, I was told that no President had ever addressed the full ATLA 
convention before, and since you were born in the same year I was, I 
thought I'd show up. [Laughter] I thank you from the bottom of my heart 
for the kindness so many of you have shown me, the support that so many 
of you have given to our initiatives, to defending the civil courts and 
defending the Constitution. This is a year in which the American people 
will be given a chance to chart the course of the future for a long time 
to come. They'll elect a new President, a new Vice President, Senators, 
and Members of Congress. In the course of that, if all the predictions 
are true, they will also be shaping a new Supreme Court because the next 
President, in all probability, will make between two and four 
appointments to the Supreme Court. Choices will be made, and those 
choices will have consequences.
    I think it is very important that you make up your mind what you 
think the choices are and what the consequences will be, and that you 
share them with others. The last time a President, nearly as I can tell 
from my research, talked to any ATLA group was when President Johnson 
appeared before your board of directors in 1964. And so I want to tell 
you a little story about 1964 to emphasize why I think this year is so 
important to all of us as Americans.
    In 1964 I graduated from high school, and I, therefore, have a very 
clear recollection of that year. All of us were still profoundly sad 
over the death of President Kennedy, but fundamentally optimistic. 
America was then in the full flow of what was until now the longest 
economic expansion in history. Vietnam had not yet blown up, and no one 
really thought it would get as big as it did or claim as many lives as 
it did or divide the country the way it did.
    There were--then we had about 10 years of vigorous activism in civil 
rights, but most people believed, given the White House and the 
composition of the Congress, that the civil rights problems of this 
country would be solved in the Congress and in the courts, not in the 
streets. And nearly everybody thought the economy was on automatic, and 
you couldn't mess

[[Page 1527]]

it up if you tried. We took low unemployment and high growth and low 
inflation for granted. And I was one of those bright-eyed idealistic 
kids that felt just that way.
    Two years later we had riots in the streets. Four years later, when 
I graduated from Georgetown, it was 9 weeks after President Johnson said 
he couldn't run for President again because the country was so divided 
over Vietnam, 8 weeks after Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis, 2 
days after Senator Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles. The next election 
had a different outcome. Within a few months, the previous longest 
economic expansion in history itself was history.
    What's the point of all this? I don't know when we'll ever have a 
time like this again, where we have so much economic prosperity and all 
the social indicators from crime to welfare to teen pregnancy, you name 
it, they're all going in the right direction; where our country is in a 
position to be a force for peace and freedom and decency from the Middle 
East to Northern Ireland to the Balkans to Africa and Latin America; 
where we have the chance to build the future of our dreams for our 
children and protect the fundamental essence of American citizenship and 
constitutional liberty, even as we build a more united community amidst 
all of our diversity.
    And I'm old enough now to know that nothing stays the same, and 
things change. And I say this to you more as a citizen than as a 
President, because I'm not a candidate this year. But I think it is 
profoundly important that the American people make up their mind what to 
do with this moment--this magic moment in our history. And I think we 
will not ever forgive ourselves if we let it get away from us.
    In 1964, when LBJ came here, we let it get away from us. But the 
problems were deep and imponderable and difficult to move away from--the 
problem of Vietnam and the problem of civil rights. We are not burdened 
to the extent that time was by anything of that magnitude. But we know 
what's coming down the pike. We know we have to deal with the retirement 
of the baby boomers. We know we're not giving every kid in this country 
a world-class education. We know that we have not done what we should do 
in terms of safe streets and health care. We know we're going to have to 
deal with the problems of climate change. We know this explosion in 
biotechnology that the human genome project exemplifies will change 
things forever and require us to rethink our whole notion of health and 
retirement. We know that we have responsibilities to people around the 
world if we want Americans to do as well as they can at home.
    And at the core of it all is, what is our fundamental notion about 
what it means to be a citizen of this country, to have rights in the 
courts and on the streets and in our daily lives?--yes, but also to have 
responsibilities to one another and to our country and to the future.
    I want you all to think about that. I've done everything I knew to 
turn this country around, to try to get things going in the right 
direction. And now all the great stuff is still out there just waiting 
for us to build a future of our dreams for our kids. That's all that 
matters, not the politics, not the injuries, not the hurts, not the 
barbs, not the bragging, not the plaudits.
    There's an old Italian proverb that says, ``After the game, the king 
and the pawn go back into the same box.'' It's well to remember. All we 
really have is our common humanity. But once in a great long while, we 
get an unbelievable opportunity to make the most of it. You've got it 
now, and I hope you will.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:25 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Richard H. Middleton, Jr., president, and 
Fred Baron, president-elect, Association of Trial Lawyers of America; 
and Gov. Mel Carnahan of Missouri.