Resource: Rhetorical Evil and the Prison Litigation Reform Act

This article exposes the misleading presumptions and rhetorical devices that allowed a bad bill to become law. How? The rhetorical performances of the four senators who proposed and passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) created narrative constructions that labeled, sustained, supported, and justified the need for harsh intercession into the federal court system. Discussion on the final passage from the 1995 Senate floor was dominated by four senators: Robert Dole (R, Kansas), Orrin Hatch (R, Utah), Spencer Abraham (R, Michigan), and Jon Kyl (R, Arizona). These Congressional sponsors of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 abused professional rhetoric. They offered misleading statistics. They told stories that combined into a woven narrative of inmate abuse of the legal system, in which inmates purportedly file frivolous grievances. They told only one side of stories, ignoring any prisoner's legitimate facts behind the court filings. They repeatedly labeled federal judges as "liberals" who were willing to grant any inmate any frivolous request. They insisted that tax dollars were thrown away on inmate filings costs. To top all that off, they insisted that their audience, the other Senators, should fear thousands of violent inmates, court-freed and roaming the streets.