EDWARDSVILLE - When advocates of tort reform delivered their Madison County Manifesto a year ago, they touched off a controversy that swept through the medical malpractice insurance crisis this year - one that is now playing itself out in the campaign for a seat on the Illinois Supreme Court.
   The American Tort Reform Association later published its "Bringing Justice to Judicial Hellholes 2003" report that targeted Madison County, Ill. as the No. 1 "judicial hellhole" in the country.
   This designation was based upon a poll of ATRA members and others

   The question of whether class action lawsuits should remain in state courts or be propelled to the federal court system is a topic the 108th Congress is preparing to debate.
   Introduced by the U.S. Senate in June 2003, the Class Action Fairness Act, approved in the U.S. House as HR 1115 three months earlier, never made it past the Senate Rules Committee.
   The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform is hoping that will change, once Congress passes its U.S. Department of Defense spending authorization legislation

and reexamines a compromise version of the federal Class Action Fairness Act, now known as SB 2062.
   The essence of the legislation is this: A national class action lawsuit would be required to move from state court to federal court if [continue]