The Senate is scheduled to vote today on the “Class Action Fairness Act of 2003.” What’s scheduled is not a straight up-or-down vote but a vote on something called “cloture,” the procedure under which 60 senators are needed to bring a piece of legislation to the floor. In other words, the Republicans, with their narrow Senate majority, won’t be able to carry this one on their own, and the Democrats are trying to prevent the measure from coming to a straight up-or-down vote that could be used in a 30-second campaign commercial by their opponents without having to explain the word cloture. Which brings the question to the two Democratic solons who represent New York in Washington, Senators Schumer and Clinton.

As far as tort-reform measures go, the Class Action Fairness Act is a relatively timid measure. There’s no monetary cap on damages or on legal fees. There’s no “loser-pays” provision to make those who file unsuccessful lawsuits pay the legal fees of the company they are suing. The provision to be voted on today simply contains some tough language — warning that in some cases, “counsel are awarded large fees, while leaving class members with coupons or other awards of little or no value.” And it makes it easier for corporations under attack to have their cases heard in federal court rather than in places like Jefferson County, Miss., and Madison County, Ill. As a Manhattan Institute report on Trial Lawyers Inc. recently quoted anti-tobacco lawyer Richard Scruggs as saying, “It’s almost impossible to get a fair trial if you are a defendant in some of these places.”

In recent decades, New Yorkers have been suffering mightily under the explosion of class action litigation. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Schumer both have been known to claim they are Bill-Clinton-style moderate, centrist Democrats. So New Yorkers will be watching to see whether, when they vote today, they side with Mr. Clinton’s domestic policy aide Rahm Emanuel, now a Democratic congressman from Illinois, who supported the legislation when it passed the House. It’d be a vote for consumers and businesses alike against Trial Lawyers Inc. The vote will be an important test of who is in the sway of the trial lawyers and who will be able to stand independently as the fight for tort reform unfolds in the months and years ahead.