Robert Fellmeth

Robert ("Bob") Fellmeth, graduated with honors from Stanford University (AB 1967) and from Harvard University (JD 1970). He chaired the law school’s Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Research Committee and worked on the initial issues of the Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Law Review. While at Harvard Law School he became one of the original "Nader's Raiders," working as part of the consumer movement of the 1960s and '70s with consumer advocate Ralph Nader. He was one of the initial 7 law students investigating the Federal Trade Commission in 1968, and was one of three co-authors of The Nader Report on the Federal Trade Commission(w/ Schulz and Cox, Baron Press, 1968).

After its publication, he organized all of what was then called “Nader’s Raiders” in the summer of 1969, raising funds from four foundations and recruiting 110 researchers divided into 5 “teams” examining the performance of the FDA, Department of Agriculture, air pollution and water pollution control and the transportation regulation of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Resulting studies and books included The Chemical Feast, Vanishing Air, Water Wasteland, Sewing the Wind, and the Interstate Commerce Omission. The last was a team directed by him and consisting of 6 co-authors resulting in the book: the Interstate Commerce Omission (Grossman, 1969). During this period, Life Magazine did a story on the groups entitled “The Lone Ranger Gets a Posse” and featuring the student researchers, including Fellmeth and the team directors, behind Nader on the Capitol steps.

Fellmeth remained with Nader after graduation from Harvard Law in 1970. He then directed a study of land use policy in California, under the aegis of Nader’s Center for Study of Responsive Law, that produced the book: The Politics of Land (Grossman, 1970). From 1971 to 1973, he directed the Nader Congress Project as part of that Center. The Project produced 30- to 50-page profiles of every incumbent member of Congress written by young journalists, with support from volunteer researchers in the state capitols and Congressional districts. They included demographics about each district, campaign finance details and campaign promises and electoral results, and included early revelation of committee votes of members (until then not released or discussed publicly). The profiles were published in summary form in many newspapers in Congressional districts just prior to the 1972 elections. Fellmeth wrote several of the profiles. The production of those profiles was a major aspect of the Project and was overseen by Joan Claybrook, later director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and later President of the national consumer and public interest organization: Public Citizen. The Project also published five books about the major committees of the Congress, with Fellmeth contributing to The Commerce Committees book edited by Project Director David Price, later a member of Congress. The Project also produced the best seller Who Runs Congress. Fellmeth wrote the preface as project director, with the authorship divided among David Zwick, James Fallows, and Mark Green. These three later became well-known figures in American public policy. Students writing profiles included a number of later prominent journalists, including Michael Kinsley, Gwen Kinkead and David Ignatius.

Fellmeth’s work related to early reform efforts in the early 1970s, including the Federal Trade Commission (the FTC Improvements Act) and the deregulation of trucking (the Surface Transportation Deregulation Act). He was one of the first consumer advocates to embrace restoration of free market forces – and at times was identified as the "conservative" within the movement. His associates during the 1966 to 1972 period worked to enact many of the consumer statutes now in force, including those providing for freedom of information, auto/truck, worker and product safety, truth in advertising, and consumer protections across a wide spectrum of subject areas – from credit to home buying. Fellmeth is featured in the biographies of Nader and the early years of the consumer movement, including the recent documentary "An Ureasonable Man."

Professor Fellmeth left the Nader organization after the Congress Project in 1973. He had already passed the California bar in 1971. He then became a public prosecutor in San Diego County, eventually specializing in white collar crime, particularly antitrust offenses. In 1974, he created the nation’s first antitrust prosecution unit operating at the district attorney (county) level and enforcing state unfair competition laws. For the next seven years he filed cases against large corporations. For two of those years, he was cross commissioned also as an Assistant United States Attorney – allowing him to prosecute criminally and civilly in either the state or federal jurisdiction. Over this period, he prosecuted 22 antitrust and unfair competition cases. Those reported (with published appellate decisions) included People v. Mobile Magic and the case of People v. National Association of Realtors, with a resulting judgment of liability for tie-in and price fixing offenses against the national, state and local realtor trade associations. During this period, Professor Fellmeth taught at the College of the National Association of District Attorneys, and at the National Judicial College (the training facility in Reno, Nevada created by the U.S. Supreme Court for the training of federal district and state court judges).

During this 1973 to 1982 period, he also worked with the California District Attorneys’ Association to rewrite the unfair competition laws of California. He drafted a series of four amendments, introduced by then state legislator Alan Sieroty, which moved the statute from Civil Code Section 3369 and largely expanded it into its present form in Ca. Bus. & Profs. Code Section 17200 et seq. In later years, Fellmeth was an enforcer of the statute as a prosecutor, private civil counsel, and public interest advocate. After 1993, he became concerned about plaintiff attorney abuses of the law and recommended reforms to require some of the due process measures of class action law to prevent multiple or spurious lawsuits for the same alleged offense. He was appointed as special consultant to the State Legislature’s “Law Revision Commission” from 1995 to 1998 to consider reforms. His proposals included a requirement that the person bringing the action for the "general public" qualify as a typical victim and must "adequately represent" the public (e.g., have no inappropriate relationship with the attorneys involved and no conflicts of interest), that proper notice be given to the public through the offices of the Attorney General and proper publication for "opt out" opportunity, and that a court review all cases and settlements for due process compliance and fairness. These measures, Fellmeth argued, would limit abuses, and confer proper finality to cases. However, his reforms were opposed by both the insurance industry and the trial lawyers and the legislature rejected them. The legislative committee members commented that there was no "problem" requiring solution. Three years later, the Trevor Law Group in Beverly Hills and other law firms began to commit widespread abuses as predicted by Fellmeth. Law firms brought hundreds of pro forma actions against car repair firms, nail salons and restaurants for highly technical violations and demanding payment, with no finality or res judicata that would prevent another suit for the same alleged wrongs, and lacking any review of attorneys' fees demanded and paid. The State Bar responded with disciplinary action against the lawyers involved, and Fellmeth was retained as one of the Bar's "expert witnesses" in these prosecutions -- which eventually disbarred most of the offending attorneys. However, the abuses also mobilized industry to limit California's Unfair Competition Law. They proposed Proposition 64 in 2004, which went well beyond the changes urged by Fellmeth, and imposed restrictions that he opposed as "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." The measure passed by a 59% to 41% margin and included full class action requirements beyond those recommended by Fellmeth, and over his stated opposition in op eds at the time. The proposition also removed from unfair competition coverage any case not involving direct financial loss. Hence, health, safety, privacy and environmental offenses no longer were included within the statute’s ambit.

During the 1976 to 1981 period, Fellmeth was appointed by the Governor to the State Athletic Commission, a five member body regulating boxing and wrestling, et al. Fellmeth was selected to Chair the Commission for 3 of his 5 years by other commissioners. He drafted the world’s first and only remaining pension plan for boxers and sponsored its legislative enactment in 1980 (Bus. & Profs. Section 18880 et seq.) It currently covers over 500 boxers who have fought and vested in California. Fellmeth has periodically defended the pension plan from promoter opposition and attempts to eliminate it over the succeeding 32 years since its creation. In recent years, he supported legislation that has liberalized it to allow early benefits for disability or for employment retraining.

In 1978, Professor Fellmeth began to teach antitrust and consumer law at the University of San Diego School of Law part-time, while still serving as a prosecutor. He moved over full-time to teaching in 1982 and won tenure as a full professor at the school in 1984. Soon thereafter, he was appointed to hold the “Price Chair in Public Interest Law” one of several such chairs nationally. Professor Fellmeth started the Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL) in 1980, training law students in public interest practice. CPIL offers a year long course "Public Interest Law and Practice" with a clinic component. The course uses state agencies as the forum for teaching public interest law. Students learn about generic sunshine and procedural constitutional principles and statutes that govern the executive branch. Students are then assigned two specific agencies for the year. They monitor agency meetings -- attending them at CPIL expense wherever they occur in the state. Students learn generally applicable law and gain expertise in the subject matter of their assigned agencies. They read agenda materials, prior studies, past and pending legislation and litigation, and the rulemaking record of each. This regulatory forum was selected because of its domination by interests with a vested profit stake in its decisions (particularly the associations of trades/professions regulated by each of them, respectively), their broad authority and general enabling statutes, the lack of public disclosure of their decisions, and their importance. Covered agencies include the Public Utilities Commission, the State Bar, the Accountancy Board, the Medical Board, the Department of Managed Health Care, Cal Osha, the Insurance Commissioner, the Department of Real Estate and 20 other agencies. Fellmeth believes that most state intervention is occurring through these many state bodies and is not covered by the media, nor by law school curriculum offerings. During its first decade of the 1980s, CPIL brought litigation (e.g., Le Dao v. Board of Medical Quality Assurance requiring the licensure of more than 25 Vietnamese doctors who had allegedly been unfairly denied the right to practice after attending an AMA certified medical school, escaping Vietnam as "boat people", passing all of California's examinations and performing as interns in hospitals. CPIL won the case when the Legislature enacted CPIL sponsored legislation effectively mandating licensure. Other litigation during the early years enforced the state's Open Meetings and Public Records Acts. Legislation has included strengthening amendments to the Public Records Act and to open meeting statutes and to the Administrative Procedure Act. One theme of particular concern has been the practice of civil tort and malpractice suits against licensees that include "muzzle clauses" prohibiting any report by the plaintiff to the licensing agency of the defendant about the alleged wrongful acts or damage resulting. Fellmeth argues that such clauses benefit the offender and the plaintiff's counsel is essentially compelled to accept them because of the settlement funds at issue to be received by the client. CPIL has been successful in removing such clauses as to attorneys, but gubernatorial vetoes have defeated its extension to suits relevant to many other regulatory agencies.

At the same time, CPIL was active in rulemaking advocacy before many of the agencies monitored, with students earning credit as "policy clinic" students while engaged in such advocacy, usually during their third year in law school. During 1980–85 in particular, state law (AB 1111) required all agencies to review all of the rules previously adopted by them and to clarify, cull and correct. CPIL students were involved in this period of rule rewriting.

Related to the executive branch policies reviewed by CPIL during this period is its continuing critique of state Administrative Procedure Act (APA) practice. On the rulemaking side, CPIL argues that the "neutral" post hoc review of agency adopted rules by the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) is justified when reviewing for "authority, clarity" and other criteria guiding that approval process, but that the "necessity" requirement is overly broad and that those employed by OAL have no expertise whatever in the subject matter, making this level of review more of a red tape exercise than the application of considered judgment. CPIL is also critical of the APA on the discipline side, arguing that the state properly should conduct such investigations in a "vertical prosecutions" model, with the deputy attorney general who prosecutes them controlling and directing the relevant investigation. CPIL describes the current model as a disjointed investigation by someone lacking legal knowledge and who will not offer the case before an administrative law judge. CPIL also objects to the "all or nothing" format of most interim remedies. Accused practitioners are generally allowed to continue practice while very long enforcement actions are pending – or in the alternative they are entirely suspended from practice pendente lite. Fellmeth argues that the administrative law judge assigned to a case properly has a spectrum of interim remedies, many of which could allow continued practice without the aspects (e.g. handing funds, or a particular procedure) that is the cause of the disciplinary action. Finally, CPIL objects to what it terms the highly irrational system of five separate proceedings to decide discipline: (a) a hearing before an administrative law judge that leads to merely a "proposed decision" to (b) a board or agency head, who then makes a decision without judicial knowledge, awareness of precedents, and without having seen the witnesses. It then goes (c) to superior court for retrial on an "independent judgment" basis, and then (d) to the court of appeal and (e) to petition to the state Supreme Court. These five steps are two more than exist for criminal prosecutions, and the delay is commonly above 5 years where fuily pursued. The cost is prohibitive for most respondents, who also face possible "cost recovery" by the state if any part of the discipline is upheld. The CPIL alternative is for a high quality trial before an administrative law judge, preferably with knowledge of the subject area, followed by a single step judicial review. The CPIL reforms have been partially enacted as to enforcement by the Medical Board, and by the State Bar's changed system, but not otherwise.

During the 1980s Fellmeth also served on two boards related to the work of CPIL. He served on the Board of Consumers Union of the United States, the publisher of Consumer Reports, from 1981 to 1985 – elected by the readership. He then served on the Board of California Common Cause from 1986–91, serving as its Litigation Chair from 1989–91. One of his cases was an unsuccessful attempt to remove the requirement that judges seeking re-election finance their own ballot statement – at a cost approaching the annual salary for a superior court position. The Kaplan case rejected Fellmeth's argument that such a state-created expense added obligations requiring judicial campaign solicitations and violated constitutional requirements for judicial independence. Developments since this early case in rapidly expanding politicization and campaign solicitations by judges in much of the nation continue to raise this issue.

In 1987, Fellmeth was appointed to the newly created position of State Bar Discipline Monitor by then State Attorney General John Van De Kamp. This one-time position lasted for a term of five years, reporting to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and to the legislature creating it. He served for the next five years, given substantial discovery power, and investigated the Bar’s discipline system, issuing nine reports (see www.cpil.org). His work resulted in the revamping of the State of California's attorney discipline system. He was an outspoken critic of Attorney Misconduct. His frank assessment of the dishonesty employed by lawyers in civil litigation was reported in one State Bar Discipline Monitor Report:

"The level of attorney dishonesty in representations to the court, in promises to clients, in dealings with adverse counsel, and perhaps especially in points and authorities and legal briefs, is embarrassing to anyone with a measure of intellectual pride. Part of the problem has to do with the lack of certain sanctions for deceit. It is possible to develop new rules of behavior supervening adversary representation, and restoring a measure of honor to a profession which is in a current state of well-deserved dishonor."

Many of Fellmeth’s recommended state Bar reforms were enacted during the early 1990s, including the creation of an independent State Bar Court. Previously, attorneys adjudged complaints against their colleagues, with a review before an 18 member committee dominating by practicing attorneys. The California Supreme Court reviewed all cases and became increasingly critical of the State Bar adjudication system. The new State Bar Court recommended by Fellmeth and supported by State Bar presidents removed the State Bar from this jurisdiction, placing it with an independent State Bar Court of judges appointed primarily by the Supreme Court and entirely separate from practicing attorneys. The Supreme Court approved of the change during the 1990s and issued an order allowing finality to the new Court, without required Supreme Court review of every case.

More recent State Bar advocacy by CPIL includes the substantial revision of its system of governance. Until 2011, the 23 members of the “Board of Governors” ruling the State Bar included 17 attorneys selected by other attorneys in district elections, often dominated by private, local trade associations. The Bar dues bill of 2011 (SB 163) changed the structure to a 19 member “Board of Trustees”, with only 6 members elected by attorneys and the remaining 13 selected by public officials, including the Supreme Court. The new legislation, sponsored by CPIL, also subjected the State Bar to the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act.

For most of the years from 1994 to the present, Professor Fellmeth has served on the federal "screening" committees that review applications for U.S. Attorney and federal judge positions. Appointed by Senator Barbara Boxer, he served on the bi-partisan screening committee for appointees to the Southern District of California during the Bush presidency and currently is one of 6 persons on the committee appointed by Senator Boxer for the Obama Administration. Each of California's senators has such a committee and each screens for 1/2 of the open federal positions in the district.

Professor Fellmeth’s publications in the consumer/antitrust area include 14 books, 51 academic articles in law reviews or legal publications, 87 conference presentations, some published in conference proceedings, and 170 commentaries or newspaper op eds. His major consumer related publications include the treatise California White Collar Crime, now in its third edition (w/ Papageorge, Tower, 2011). He has chaired the Board of the Public Citizen Foundation, a public interest lobby in Washington, D.C., since 1994. Public Citizen accepts no funding from corporate sources. See www.citizen.org. It includes divisions that focus on Congress (“Congress Watch”), the Health Research Group, Global Trade Watch, Energy Policy, a Litigation Unit, and a Texas field office. Those divisions have advocated successfully for air bags in automobiles, transparency and ethics in government (including the recent legislation banning insider trading by the Congress), are working for a Constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United Supreme Court case giving corporations free speech rights to contribute to campaigns through Political Action Committees without limitation or full disclosure. The Health Research Group’s “Best Pills – Worst Pills” book has sold more than 2.5 million copies and its FDA advocacy has led to the withdrawal of 23 dangerous drugs from the market. The Litigation Group specializes in U.S. Supreme Court advocacy and has argued itself 60 cases before the High Court, and prepares counsel in approximately 1/3 of the cases considered by the Court.

From 1982 to the present, Fellmeth has been used as an expert witness in private and public cases involving issues of consumer and antitrust law, regulatory law, children's law, and legal ethics. He has been retained by the District Attorneys of San Diego Los Angeles and 7 other counties, the state Attorney General involved in Judicial Commission Enforcement Actions against sitting judges, the State Bars of California and Washington, and the U.S. Attorney.

Ten years after founding the Center for Public Interest Law, Fellmeth created a sister advocacy group, the Children's Advocacy Institute (CAI). See www.caichildlaw.org. After lobbying for consumers in Sacramento, he chose to focus on children's rights because he says their interests are under-represented in government. He also contends that “affinity interest groups,” from persons organized into associations around their professional or corporate interest, now dominate political influence. He has stated that even in terms of racial minorities, the elderly, gay communities, the disabled – advocates from within each group dominate political discussion and that it is a high calling to affirmatively work for a deserving group that the advocate does not personally belong to, and to be most critical of the advocate’s own group. He has cited a survey of D.C. lobbying that finds over 25,000 lobbyists, with former agency officials and Congressmen well represented, and working largely for special interests organized horizontally (among competitors or peers) to influence government. Even other diffuse interests are often well represented. He cites the elderly, for example, with its American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) spending $25 million annually on reported lobbying, and with substantial influence in voting and with the median age of large campaign contributors over 70. All of those representing the interests of children there, including CAI's lobbyist Amy Harfeld, total less than $1 million in such spending per annum. See Executive Director comments in 2010 and 2011 annual reports at www.caichildlaw.org.

In 1985, Elizabeth (Mulroy) Mohr, who had been serving as deputy director of CPIL and editor of its California Regulatory Law Reporter, moved to San Francisco and took a position as counsel within the California Department of Insurance – a post she still holds. A search was conducted among former USD students to replace her. One of the candidates was Julie D’Angelo, a graduate of the school and one of its top students – the editor-in-chief of its Law Review. Following her graduation in 1982 from USD School of Law, Ms. D’Angelo clerked for a federal district court judge in Phoenix and then worked for the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. She was among those recruited to the University of San Diego post in 1985 and returned to the school to fill it. By 1986, she served as both editor of the California Regulatory Law Reporter and the administrative director of the Center for Public Interest Law. Meanwhile, Robert Fellmeth moved over into the child advocacy subject area with the Children’s Advocacy Institute. In 1995, while both were in their forties, Julie D’Angelo and Robert Fellmeth married.

Under Professor Julianne Fellmeth's leadership from 1986 to the present, CPIL has participated heavily in advocacy before the PUC, the State Bar, the Accountancy Board, the Department of Insurance, the Medical Board, the Constractors State Licensing Board and other major agencies. She helped draft and CPIL co-sponsored the state legislation to implement the Sarbanes - Oxley accounting reforms -- with the California version allegedly a stronger regulatory version. CPIL has worked to prevent the Big Three Accounting firms from engaging in anti-competitive and unethical practices, including the Bonnie Moore case where the Board, dominated by practicing accountants, attempted to prohibit the use of the word "accountant" for use by anyone other than the CPA's who dominate the Board. CPIL has also been active in the enforcement process, serving as the staff of the Contractor's State Licensing Board Monitor. That appointed monitor, Tom Papageorge, is a well known prosecutor and white collar crime expert. The CSLB project led to legislation to strengthen its enforcement system. Professor Julie Fellmeth was herself appointed as the Medical Board Enforcement Monitor puruant to legislation authorizing broad investigatory powers to assure competent physician practice. Her reports resulted in legislation streamlining physician discipline, as discussed above. Neither she nor Robert Fellmeth receive any personal compensation for their official "monitor" work or for other work for CPIL and CAI, respectively.

Professor Julie Fellmeth has directed some of her research and advocacy on the problem of alcohol and drug abuse among professionals, including doctors, nurses and other health professionals, and attorneys. As Medical Board Enforcement Monitor, she audited the "diversion" program of the Medical Board -- allowing those accused of incompetence or other dangerous practice to delay or mitigate their discipline through substance abuse programs. She found that the practitioners of those programs made substantial monies given the often wealthy, captive audience they were empowered to treat. She also found a great deal of "gaming" of the system. Her conclusions repeated similar findings of two prior audits by the Office of the State Auditor. Another audit after her report again repeated the same critique. Accordingly, the diversion program of the Medical Board was terminated by unanimous vote of the Board effective in 2011. CPIL's stated position is not to oppose drug/alcohol rehabilitation, but to avoid using rigged treatment that is not policed nor achieves compliance, as a means to continue practice without adequate disciplinary protection and with resulting patient jeopardy. These reports and results have led to a series of anonymous attacks on the Fellmeths and CPIL on the internet. Accusations include "corruption", "bribery", alleged control of Sacramento, directed at Medical Board enforcement personnel and State Senator Liz Figueroa, then Chair of the Senate Business and Professions Committee enacting related reforms. The accusations also include a series of personal accusations about the Fellmeths. These accusations all derive from a plastic surgeon and his family and therapist -- whose license was revoked by the Medical Board for serious alcohol abuse while practicing.

Since 1989, Robert Fellmeth has focused on child advocacy. He developed a child Rights law school course that is somewhat different than most juvenile law courses, including issues of policy influence, education, nutrition, disability and other rights, as well as the traditional civil liberties material. His text for juvenile law, Child Rights and Remedies, is now in its third edition (Clarity Press, 2002, 2006, 2011). The CAI academic program also includes clinics where students are specially certified by the State Bar to represent abused children in juvenile dependency court, and accused delinquents in juvenile delinquency course. It also include a “policy clinic” allowing students to work with the professional litigators and lobbyists of CAI in San Diego, Sacramento, and Washington D.C., where it has offices and attorney staff.

His Children's Advocacy Institute (CAI) brings test litigation, intervenes in rulemaking, and lobbies for the interests of children. CAI has sponsored 55 legislative bills that have become law, including the "Kid's Plates" (California auto license plates with a heart, plus sign, hand shape or heart) to fund child protection programs, and many of the state's safety laws concerning swimming pools, kids in cars, bicycle helmets, and playgrounds. CAI has also been active in sponsoring legislation in the areas of child support collection, homeless youth, and child welfare. From 1991 to 2004 CAI published a lengthy "California Children's Budget" -- a five hundred page publication detailing the demographic data and federal/state/local spending relevant to child poverty, nutrition, health, disability, education (k-12 and higher), protection, and delinquency. Since 1998, CAI has issued an annual "Legislative Report Card" on the performance of the State Legislature, including a review of all bills relevant to children that were seriously considered, and a score or grade for each legislator. CAI also publishes a California Children's Regulatory Law Reporter, summarizing rulemaking by the major agencies affecting children (especially the Departments of Health Services, Social Services, and Education). Since 2008, CAI has released national reports in three subject areas: counsel for children in dependency court, secrecy in the reporting of deaths and near deaths from child abuse, and state takings from foster children (The Fleecing of Foster Children). The pattern for these studies is to issue an initial report, and then to publish an updated edition every two to three years to stay on the theme of each. The reports examine the statutes and rules of the fifty states in the subject matter, and for the first two subject areas, publish "grades" from A to F for each state's performance in protecting its children. Previous reports have received substantial national and local coverage. Two such updated reports will be released in 2012. A future report is anticipated analyzing the performance of the Department of Health and Human Services in assuring state compliance with constitutional and Congressional floors in child protection.

CAI's litigation includes California Foster Parents' Association v. Lightbourne, a Ninth Circuit case that found the Department of Social Services compensation to family foster care providers to be over 30% below their actual out-of-pocket costs, in violation of federal law. CAI argued that these rates were also irrational because children in homes with functioning parents have much better outcomes than do group homes with employees serving the parental role, but the latter receive more than 8 times the compensation as do families. The litigation was assisted by the pro bono efforts of Morrison and Foerster joining with the CAI legal team. The supply of family foster care providers had contracted radically as the compensation levels retracted from inflation from 1998. The case now requires a 30% immediate increase and CPI adjustment hereafter. CAI has two other test cases in the courts as of 2012. In addition to appellate litigation by CAI and CPIL, Professor Fellmeth has written numerous amicus briefs at the appellate level, including the amicus brief for the National Association of Counsel for Children in the Troxel case, and for CAI on the Camreta case -- both before the U.S. Supreme Court since 2006. The Camreta brief was selected as "Brief of the Week" by the National Law Journal in 2011.

Professor Fellmeth has long been a registered Republican, but his writings reflect strong antipathy toward the policies of both political parties. He has written critically of liberal Democrats in terms of the unprecedented debt being accumulated by adult Boomers to be imposed upon future generations, particularly from social security and MediCare – terming this imposition the single most profound ethical issue of our time. He also writes critically of liberal ideology for its excessive reliance on social workers, for whom abused children are necessarily part of a "caseload", of dependence on public employee unions, and of liberal tolerance for adult license -- including the abandonment of a child’s “simple right to be intended by two people.” At the same time, his writing rejects the prescriptions of many conservative Republicans. His writings condemn them as self-indulgent takers and environmental despoilers -- lacking appreciation for the mutual sacrifices of many who created the markets and freedoms they purportedly respect. And he is critical of what he terms their role as servants of moneyed interests.

His critique of the excessive influence of corporations, particularly after Citizens United, involves the following stated thesis: That corporations consist of collections of capital devoted to some invested purpose, and with officers and lobbyists necessarily (and properly) serving the financial interests of stockholders funding it. But such a focus is very different than that of a human directed democracy – controlled by individuals who are concerned about diffuse and future interests. The corporation necessarily seeks to "free ride" for maximum profit, and to take exhaustible resources or impose costs on others or on the future -- particularly where it serves the protection of the capital investment that is its necessary lodestar. Fellmeth argues that this bias means that elevation of such entities to "human" rights status and enhanced political influence pushes the needle radically in a direction against the sentiments of people who properly determine democratic outcomes -- to protect the weak, to be fair to interests who are not organized or involved in profit or capital protection, and to "pass down the line" what we have received from our grandparents and parents to our legatees. See Executive Director messages in the annual reports of CAI for 2009 through 2011 at www.caichildlaw.org.

Fellmeth has been involved in the governance of the National Association of Counsel for Children since 2004, serving as its Board President from 2010 to 2012, www.naccchildlaw.org. He is on the Board of the First Star Foundation, www.firststar.org. He has been counsel to the Board of Voices for America's Children since 2002, www.voices.org.

Professor Fellmeth has been instrumental in the creation of ancillary consumer and child advocacy organizations. In 1983, he helped to create the Utility Consumer Action Network (UCAN) as a project of CPIL during its first three years. It sought access to the billing envelopes of the San Diego Gas and Electric Utility through an administrative action brought by CPIL before the PUC. CPIL won the case and UCAN has since become the nation’s second largest utility ratepayer organization, see www.ucan.org. In 1988 he helped to create the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a national research and advocacy center on privacy rights, www.privacyrights.org. Also in the mid 1980s, he helped in the development of the Maternal and Child Health Access Foundation of Lynn Kersey in Los Angeles, www.mchaccess.org. In 2006, he helped to organize what is now the third entity operating under the aegis of CPIL, the Energy Policy Initiatives Center (EPIC) at the University of San Diego School of Law www.sandiego.edu/EPIC. EPIC includes law school courses in energy and environmental law, clinic placements with the PUC, Energy Commission and other agencies, and an annual environmental symposium of national experts. In 2008, EPIC helped to sponsor the nation’s first student law review on the subject of global warming.

In 1997, Fellmeth was named “Community Champion for 30 Years of Work in Injury Prevention” by the Civil Justice Foundation. In 2009, he was honored by the University’s School of Education Sciences and Leadership as a “Remarkable Leader in Education.” CPIL, CAI and EPIC have graduated more than 1,200 law students from their clinic programs since 1980, many of whom are now practicing public and public interest law. The student room at CPIL includes a wall entitled "Trailblazers" that displays current photos and resumes of some fifty consumer, agency, environmental and child advocacy leaders from among former graduates of the programs.

Professor Fellmeth has two children from a previous marriage to Jill Diane Heiman: Michael Q. Fellmeth, Vice President at Dramatists Play Service, Inc., a play-publishing firm in New York City, and Aaron X. Fellmeth, a professor of international law at Arizona State University.