The Center for Justice & Democracy has a dedicated professional staff committed to protecting the civil justice system (listed here) and also consults with many individuals outside CJ&D to fight on behalf of the civil justice system. To reach those individuals, contact us at [email protected].
Joanne Doroshow is the founder and executive director of the Center for Justice & Democracy and co-founder of Americans for Insurance Reform (AIR). She is also Adjunct Professor at New York Law School, where she teaches "Congressional Consumer and Civil Justice." An attorney, Doroshow has worked on civil justice issues since 1986, when she directed an insurance industry and liability project for Ralph Nader. Together, they developed some of the first educational materials used to fight "tort reform" around the country including Goliath: Lloyd's of London in the United States (1988) and Safeguarding Democracy: The Case for the Civil Jury (1992).
Doroshow founded CJ&D in 1998. As CJ&D Executive Director, she has testified before the U.S. Congress many times and appeared before numerous state legislatures around the country. She has written or co-authored numerous CJ&D studies and white papers on civil justice and insurance issues for both CJ&D and AIR. As a nationally recognized civil justice expert, she has appeared on television and radio programs on CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, C-SPAN, and NPR. She is regularly quoted in publications nationwide, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald and Los Angeles Times. In addition, she appears in the 2011 HBO documentary, Hot Coffee.
Doroshow has film and television production experience as well. She was one of the producers of the 1992 Academy Award-winning documentary, The Panama Deception, and has worked on the theatrical and broadcast distribution of a number of films. In 1994 and 1995, she was a Segment Producer and Coordinating Producer for TV Nation, the Emmy Award-winning humorous political show. She was also a Coordinating Producer of the documentary Sicko (2007) and an Associate Producer of Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004).
From 1981 through 1985, Doroshow was lead counsel and spokesperson for TMI Alert, a community group working to block the restart of the TMI-1 nuclear reactor after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and whose case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. She is featured in both the 2022 Emmy-nominated Netflix limited series Meltdown: Three Mile Island, and the 2023 feature documentary Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island. In 1982, she worked on the successful Supreme Court appeal of the Karen Silkwood case. From 1989 to 1990, Doroshow was the director of California-based Bhopal Justice Campaign, a coalition of community groups and leaders fighting for statewide support for victims of the India gas disaster.
Emily is an attorney who is one the organization's principal researchers, writers and analysts. She is responsible for updating all of CJ&D's briefing books and fact sheets, as well as writing or co-writing CJ&D studies and white papers. Emily also compiles CJ&D's civil justice daily news digest, which is sent to CJ&D supporters and friends upon request.
Prior to joining CJ&D in 2000, Emily was a volunteer attorney with the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Community Outreach Law Program, Legal Clinic for the Homeless. She was a student law clerk for Federal Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis and New York County Civil Court Justice Alice Schlesinger, a Mediator with the Brooklyn Law School Mediation Clinic, and an intern with the New York City Commission on Human Rights. She received her law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1998.
The Center for Justice & Democracy is the only national consumer organization in the country exclusively dedicated to protecting our civil justice system. If you'd like more information, please contact us.
