“Life Without Lawyers” — We Can Only Hope
January 12, 2009
The year’s “most needed book on public affairs,” says George Will, is Philip Howard’s new book, Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans From Too Much Law. Howard, of course, helped popularize the counter-revolution against the trial bar’s takeover of our courts in his landmark, “The Death of Common Sense.” In his review, Will culls some of the most interesting anecdotes and factoids:
- One Florida school called police to haul away a disorderly 5-year-old student in handcuffs rather than risk a lawsuit if a teacher took action to discipline her.
- Broward County, Florida banned running at recess after settling 189 playground lawsuits over a five-year period.
- A five-inch fishing lure with a three-pronged hook comes with a warning label: Harmful if swallowed.
- In a 2004 survey, more than three out of four (78%) middle and high school teachers said they’d been threatened with litigation by students.
- Between 1970 and 2000, the proportion of lawyers in the U.S. workforce nearly doubled.
Will also zeroes in on America’s lawsuit-happy culture that made these outrages possible:
Lawsuits express the theory that anyone should be able to sue to assert that someone is culpable for even an idiotic action by the plaintiff, such as swallowing a fishing lure….Today, rights increasingly are offensive weapons wielded to inflict demands on other people, using state power for private aggrandizement. The multiplication of rights … multiplies nonnegotiable conflicts … on the assumption, Howard says, “that society will somehow achieve equilibrium if it placates whomever is complaining.”
ShopFloor points out that the Washington Post, as if to prove this thesis, features links to two asbestos lawyers and three personal injury law firms on the same web page as Will’s column appears.
Posted by Dan Pero in the categories: Tort Reform, Trial Lawyers
2 Responses to ““Life Without Lawyers” — We Can Only Hope”
Dan, thanks for the tip on this book. I intend to buy and read it.
Have, or will you? I would like to read your personal take on the actual material contained in Mr. Howard’s opus.
Or is Geoge Will’s review as deep as you will go in your analysis of these issues?
[...] subject of a nice piece in The Economist the other week (our earlier coverage). American Courthouse also comments, while Carter Wood at ShopFloor observes that George Will’s column at the Washington Post [...]