The Pacific Research Institute has released its U.S. Tort Liability Index for 2010, again authored by PRI fellows Lawrence J. McQuillan and Hovannes Abramyan.

I haven't yet had time to read the report, but I will note that this criticism by Andrew Sullivan is profoundly unfair. Sullivan calls PRI's decision to have Sarah Palin write a foreword to the report an example of "epistemic closure" and cites with apparent approval a reader claiming this choice exemplifies an "intellectual void" in think tanks. But Palin was obviously chosen because the state she governed until recently -- Alaska -- came in first in the PRI rankings, as she makes pretty clear in the brief foreword itself. Might PRI instead have chosen Marie Gryphon to talk about Alaska's unique-in-America loser pays rules? Sure. But picking the recently departed governor of the #1 state certainly makes sense.