The Case Against Lawyers

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: As a lawyer, district attorney, and then judge, Catherine Crier got to know the ins and outs of how the American judicial process really worked. Forget what you learned in civics class, what Ms. Crier saw was that the American judicial process works poorly, too often to the detriment of the whole country. In this book, she sets out her case that the American legal system is broken, and is seriously in need of repair.

As with many Americans, I watched in dismay as people won multi-million dollar punitive awards, often on the very strangest flights of logic. My wife worked at a school where parents learned to show up for parent-teacher meetings with a lawyer! Overall, it might be argued that Ms. Crier is overstating her case, but she makes an excellent argument, one that should be taken seriously. She exposes abusers of the system from trial lawyers to corporate lobbyist, showing that neither political party can avoid blame for the mess we are currently in.

If you are interested in reading about the American judicial system, or want to read about a debate that is sure to increase in the *near* future, then I highly recommend that you get this book.

Rating:
Summary: Right on the money!
Review: Crier tells the American people how we have hijacked our legal system in this great book. She has no other motives or hidden agenda other than the desire to re-establish our country along the lines of justice, equality, and opportunity. But what I thought was great about this book is that she not only presented problems (anyone can do that, but I must admit that Crier's research and analysis is outstanding), she also offered solutions and suggestions on how to "take back" our legal system. This is an interesting book and a must read for anyone interested in current affairs or law.

Rating:
Summary: It's good, but it's been said before
Review: I had great expectations for this book. I somehow hoped to find in it something new; after all, this was an attorney, a judge; mayhaps there could be a new insight, on the problem of lawyers and judges runnign amok.
Alas, it was not to be. The book is well researched, well, almost; in ch 4, when discussing the ADM Ethanol boondoggle, MS. Crier confuses Ethanol (grain alcohol) with Methanol (wood alcohol). However, much of it is basically a rehash of P.K. Howard's "The death of Common Sense"
A few insights on how PACs work, and soft money influence on the Federal, State and local governments, but nothing really new.
The promised comments on how we can retake our government seem to me a series of platitudes, with as much chance of happening as Ralph Nader of becoming president.
The one area of interest, and the one ray of hope, was where Ms. Crier explained how big industry bribes both parties equally, with one exception. The trial lawyers almost exclusively supported (i.e. bribed) the democratic party candidates. Lo and behold, they backed the wrong horse, and, here is the ray of hope, we might, just might, see some significant tort reform.
I'm not holding my breath though.
If you have not read "The death of common sense" then this one is worth a try

Rating:
Summary: Everything You Didn't Want to Know
Review: I thought it was OK just to think about how crazy things are getting. Ms. Crier puts it on a plate and makes you take a big whiff of the stuff.

This book will anger and hopefully energize you. From the silly to the shocking, it's all here and we better pay attention.

Rating:
Summary: Everything You Didn't Want to Know
Review: I thought it was OK just to think about how crazy things are getting. Ms. Crier puts it on a plate and makes you take a big whiff of the stuff.

This book will anger and hopefully energize you. From the silly to the shocking, it's all here and we better pay attention.

Rating:
Summary: The Case Against lawyers
Review: Oh my gosh, as infuriating to read as it is impossible to put down. Opinionated, short cases strung together in a harsh light. I got a better education into the workings of our legal system here than anywhere else, opening my eyes to a lot of hype that formed my opinions based on smoke and mirrors that Crier exposes. When a piece turns my thinking around, I'm impressed; Crier did it.
Lawyers play more games with the truth than we want to know, which helps answer the old question of why no lawyers never drown: they float. So how do we stop it? Call a lawyer?

FYI: my boss ordered about tweny copies of this as gifts to people like Chicago Mayor Rich Daley as gifts; Daley sent back a personal note of thanks, but none of the judges who received copies said anything; hmm, imagine that! ;)

Rating:
Summary: Finally the word is out!
Review: Thank you Catherine Crier!
Finally someone has brought to public attention the problems with the American court system and Lawyers today! Much of what Ms. Crier has written has been on the minds of many - but finally it has been put into language that both legal and non-legal people can both understand.
It is very important to me that the source of information like this be credible. Crier is a well respected journalist - who comes from a legal background (having been both a lawyer and judge). She is knowledgeable and involved in everything she writes about - which to me gives her every authority to discuss this freely. This is definitely a book that could help change the world for the better. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and Frustrating
Review: The book is clearly written with example after example of
how our world in now almost totally controlled by lawyers.
Trial lawyers jacking up insurance costs, government lawyers
effectively changing the laws after they are written, and
lawyers creating group think through lawsuits all combine to
completely change this country in the past 60 or so years.
As a former judge, Crier should have known enough to go an added
step and say that Judges have let the lawyers do it. The Democrats have known this for years and stacked the judges over
these 60 some years starting with FDRs court packing episode.
Now the Republicans are finally catching on and the Dems are howling like stuck pigs.

Rating:
Summary: Verdict: Lawyers and Politicians Guilty As Charged
Review: This in an interesting and disturbing book about how the law today has frequently been used to abuse citizens and weaken our democracy and economy rather than protect us. Catherine Crier observed the inner workings of the legal system as a private attorney, distict attorney, and judge; her frustrations with the current day practice of law in contrast to her beliefs regarding the underlying intent of the founders of our country led her to write this book. It has a theoretical base but primarily consists of anecdotes and case studies so outrageous that she hopes that her readers will heed her call for a return to commonsense and personal responsibilty. It is easy to read and contains a lot of very diverse material, some widely disseminated but most probably unknown to casual students of the subject. And I believe that she proves her case.

She begins with a brief introduction which outlines in very cogent form her view of nine characteristics with which our laws should uniformly conform but which are often lacking from modern jurisprudence. Then she goes on to examine several areas of particular concern to her: among these are the perversion of our educational system by the search for equality rather than excellence, the police state tactics of regulatory agencies, the extremes to which enforcement of the ADA has beeen carried, civil rights vs. civil liberties, the role of money and lobbyists in politics, and particularly effectively in my opinion how our war on drugs has become an "addiction to insanity". Her conclusion that in some cases we seem to have entered the Twilight Zone in such areas as personal damage awards regardless of whether any neglience was actually involved and discussion of how attorneys often use the threat of punitive damages as "a sledgehammer" is right on the mark.

Nevertheless, I recommend this book with mixed feelings and found it hard to rate. While the author does a very good and often entertaining job of proving her case, her discussion of our Constitutional principles and how they have been subverted could have been better. She also vacillated frequently between her apparent libertarian impulses (with which I am generally in agreement) and populist outrage which was naive and very disappointing. While she pays lip service to the fact that politicians and businessmen usually just respond to the incentives with which they are presented, she often seems to be reflexively and almost rabidly anti-business. At the same time she pays no attention to such other sources of power as labor unions and associations and groups such as AARP and Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.

I was also disappointed by the brevity and unconvincing or incomplete nature of her suggestions for reform. She seems to fail completely to recognize that most of the things which she finds outrageous result from the sheer size our our government today and the potential for abuse which this provides. Thus if the problems are systemic in nature they need a comprehensive solution. She convinces us that we have suffered horrible injury, then offers us a few bandaids.

She seems to agree with the Jeffersonian vision of limited government, personal responsibilty, and a dominant role for civil rather than political society. In fact, she refers to Jefferson often and contrasts his views with those of Hamilton. Yet she refrains from aggressively endorsing a return to Constitutional first principles, especially a reinterpretation by the courts of the Commerce Clause and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. She wants us to take action, but apparently is hesitant to call for an activist role for the courts in defense of liberty. Perhaps she is afraid of the harm that an activist judiciary has done in creating the meaningless idea of "a living Constitution", but an activist judiciary in defense of first principles is quite different. In this fight, only the framers understanding that the Constitution is the shield of the people against the sword of government will save us in the end from the tryanny to which she believes we are now subjected. Hopefully her next book will reach this conclusion and more clearly articulate this point.

Rating:
Summary: The Case Against Lawyers
Review: This is the best book I have ever read. This is what the personal injury attorneys running for political office like Sen John Edwards don't want you to see. This book outlines how personal injury attorneys are sucking the lifeblood out of society. In a very articulate way, Ms Crier a former judge explains how litigation out of control in this country could lead to the same conclusion as what Rome encountered at the height of its empire. She asserts how personal injury attorneys are raping society mostly for personal gain. She explains how every multimillion dollar award is being paid for by you and me. She also explains how unless we have a complete overhaul of our legal system which is a euphemism for major tort reform our country in my opinion is destined to become a third world nation. Our country's competitiveness in the world's business markets is being hurt by the legal surcharges that are added to the cost of every product. The release of her book is very appropriate atatime when corporations like McDonald's are being sued by obese customers and doctors are leaving the practice of medicine because of frivolous lawsuits. I strongly recomend the book to businessmen, medical professionals, scholars and anyone who cares about the future of America!