While the United States is often called the Land of the Law Suit, in reality Americans hardly sue at all. In fact, when it comes to physical injuries, over 90% of the time, we--as David M. Engel points out in his engaging and provocative book--simply lump it, making no claims against either the injurers or their insurance companies. Bringing to bear an impressive array of research and data, Engel firmly and persuasively demolishes the pervasive myth of the litigious American. But why don t most people sue whey they have been wrongfully physically injured? We have in fact a mystery, what Engel calls The Case of the Missing Plaintiff. The solution his investigation leads us to is as fascinating as it is unexpected. Engel reconstructs how people who suffer injuries actually react to them. When real people experience physical injuries, their lives, thoughts, and emotions are profoundly disrupted and compromised. They often have difficulty thinking clearly and acting decisively. Human nature, our immediate friends and families, and broader social and cultural factors all tend again injury victims making claims. And as often as one might have heard of victim-blaming, self-blame is one of the most common reactions of victims to their injuries. Ultimately Engel shows that the proliferation of law and regulations in our society is not the problem. The real problem is the law s failure to protect those who suffer wrongful injuries. Tort law is usually said to serve three purposes that even those who want to curtail law suits would agree on: to compensate losses suffered by injury victims, to deter unnecessarily risky and harmful behavior, and to correct the moral injustice that results when one person or group injures another. Engel s book clearly and powerfully shows that none of these purposes is being met and concludes his investigation with recommendations for how they might be."

The democratic revolution that swept Classical Athens transformed the role of law in Athenian society. The legal process and the popular courts took on new and expanded roles in civic life. Although these changes occurred with the consent of the "people" (demos), Athenians were ambivalent about the spread of legal culture. In particular, they were aware that unscrupulous individuals might manipulate the laws and the legal process to serve their own purposes. Indeed, throughout the Classical Period, when Athenians gathered in public and private settings, they regularly discussed, debated, and complained about legal chicanery, or sukophantia. In The Litigious Athenian, Matthew Christ explores what this ancient discussion reveals about how Athenians conceived of and responded to problematic aspects of their collective legal experience. The transfer of significant judicial power from the elite Areopagus Council to the popular courts was a crucial step in the establishment of Athenian democracy, Christ notes, and Athenians took great pride in their legal system. They chose not to make significant changes to their legal institutions even though they could have done so at any time through a majority vote of the Assembly. Determining that the term sykophant was applied rhetorically rather than, as some have believed, to describe a specific subclass, Christ shows how the public debates over legal chicanery helped define the limits of ethical behavior under the law and in public life.

"Burke drills deep into America's unique culture of litigation and is rewarded with a powerful insight: it is not the public or even lawyers that are so darn litigious, but American law itself. This meticulous, dispassionate book stands not only to advance the debate but—I hope—to reshape it."—Jonathan Rauch, author of Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working "Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights is a fascinating study of the American penchant for public policies that rely on lawsuits to get things done. Burke's analysis is insightful and original. This book compellingly shows that litigious policies have deep roots in our Constitution, culture, and politics."—Charles Epp, author of The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective "Burke's authoritative book demonstrates that the highly litigious American system is not an isolated anomaly but in fact fits in with deeply-rooted elements of American political culture. Where citizens of other countries rely on expert or bureaucratic judgment to resolve disputes, Americans turn to the courts. Equally novel and compelling, Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights marshals an impressive set of evidence and delivers a refreshingly well-written look at the state of American litigation."—Frank R. Baumgartner, co-author of Agendas and Instability in American Politics

In recent years, stories of reckless lawyers and greedy citizens have given the legal system, and victims in general, a bad name. Many Americans have come to believe that we live in the land of the litigious, where frivolous lawsuits and absurdly high settlements reign. Scholars have argued for years that this common view of the depraved ruin of our civil legal system is a myth, but their research and statistics rarely make the news. William Haltom and Michael McCann here persuasively show how popularized distorted understandings of tort litigation (or tort tales) have been perpetuated by the mass media and reform proponents. Distorting the Law lays bare how media coverage has sensationalized lawsuits and sympathetically portrayed corporate interests, supporting big business and reinforcing negative stereotypes of law practices. Based on extensive interviews, nearly two decades of newspaper coverage, and in-depth studies of the McDonald's coffee case and tobacco litigation, Distorting the Law offers a compelling analysis of the presumed litigation crisis, the campaign for tort law reform, and the crucial role the media play in this process.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Cultural Studies - Miscellaneous, University of North Florida, language: English, abstract: Thousands of lawsuits are discussed in courts in the United States every day, and there is a tremendous quantity of lawyers per capita. (Olson, Excerpt 1) Since other advanced democracies around the world cannot compete with such high numbers, experts, advocates, and ordinary people ask if there has been a litigation explosion, apparently leading to higher cost for society, and damaging the reputation of the American legal system and its participants. Many causes have been named such as greedy attorneys, whiny plaintiffs, and lavish insurance businesses. The following paper will discuss how the United States has become litigious and strongly refers to Thomas F. Burke’s book Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights, which gives structural explanations and case studies. Furthermore, the essay will examine how reasonable Burke argues, and look into reform possibilities and the progress made.