Customer Reviews

The Case Against Lawyers

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

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.

The mean-spirited personal attacks on Catherine Crier here -- no doubt by lawyers -- are a clear sign that her no nonsense look at how some lawyers (and by extension the system) is taking the American people for a ride, has struck a very raw, deep nerve.

The Case Against Lawyers is not about party or politics. It's for anyone -- left, right, center, etc. -- who is fed up with how the potential of this country's legal, educational, political, and moral system has been squandered by litigators and elected officials interested only in a buck and in preserving their careers. Crier's indictment of the legal system is only the beginning. In clear, concise prose she points out again and again the heads-you-lose, tails-you-lose schizophrenia we confont every day. We can't fix things because the fixes are as bad as the problems -- and the people in charge don't really want to change anything. Her examples are anecdotal and drawn from years of collecting news reports and interviewing; but anecdotal does not equal apocryphal or unfounded. In fact, every page is a revelation, from the story about not using an iron on clothes we're still wearing to the sad state of the drug war that doesn't work and never will -- and the incarcerated who pay the price. She also writes with wit and "can you believe it?" candor about the sham of our political system, money in politics, the sorry state of education, and much more. If I have one gripe it's that Crier could have offered more solutions. Maybe in an another book, which I certainly hope is in the offing.

How many times have you screamed at the tv set or newspaper, frustrated by the obvious act put on by politicians who only want your vote, and then ignore their promises? Doesn't it drive you crazy that Ken Lay will probably never be brought to justice. Aren't you incensed about frivolous lawsuits that only end up costing us all more money? Crier knows how the system works and where the bodies are buried. She points out the maddening contradictions and evasions that others labor to obscure.

This is not the work of someone interested only in parlaying her beauty into a career. (The jealous complaint of the looks-challenged who resent her having a national forum for her well-considered thoughts.) This is the work of someone with a positive outlook on life, someone who wants to unrig the system, who wants to motivate people so we can truly exercise our power to change things, and in so doing has no qualms about revealing how we've been screwed from all sides.

Get this book. Learn the truth.

Although it's always good to have someone from the profession give the legal field a much needed reality check, this book started out strong, but by the second half it should have been much better. Legal students and professionals will this book more than most, being familiar with many of the cases she mentioned regarding various legal issues, if only from law school. Her bias and overall perspective, though, needs focus.

While she probably thought she did her noble best to be even handed in her analysis, Ms. Crier's conections to the limousine-liberalism crowd reared their ugly head too often. Ms. Crier cites from sources as left-leaning Mother Jones and the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker and sometimes downright untrustworthy ones as the New York Times (I haven't forgotten about Jayson Blair or his utter lack of supervision by Times editors for too long), though she did include Bernard Goldman in her Bibliography as well as a few snippets from the WSJ. Why not also a few from National Review or Reason magazine? If there were some, my apologies for missing them.

Ms. Crier also gives some politicians too much credit, as suggesting Bill Clinton was any more interested in the environment than anybody else on P.171. What she sees as last-minute concern for the environment by the outgoing Clinton should have been easily recognizible as kickbacks to unions and political pals (labor regulations, mining regulations, logging road bans), but apparently she really has a soft spot for Clinton as some sort of good guy gone awry, and thought these acts emerged for his genuine concern for mankind - make that person-kind.

Moreover, some parts of the book are flat out laughable - declaring that psychological addiction to marijuana is almost unheard of - HA! She knows better. Having been to college and graduate school, she probably met her share of stoners there and sentenced enough repeat offenders later on as a judge to know that psychological addiction is very real with pot.

That, and "serious criminal conduct is almost never associated with the use of marijuana." Eh? I guess nobody ever stole for pot money. (I have been burglarized - I consider that serious enough). The fact that the perpetrators might not of been high when they commit crimes really misses the point; pot use can definitely be assoiated with serious crimes, like it or not - ask any experienced restaurant manager how many times he's had to fire drug using employees for stealing. Not serious enough? Check any prison population and draw your own conclusions about their motivations, then.

She also says that there has never been a death associated with the use of pot. Now admittedly, it isn't nearly as dangerous as other drugs or alcohol, and it may be impossible to overdose on pot (I don't know for certain) but is she for real? So, driving under the influence of pot has never resulted in a traffic fatality? And she used to be a judge? Whatever side of the fence one might be on in the legalization of pot debate, I can't believe she'd say such ridiculous things.

Towards the end, in another understandable post 911-based rant, she cited the FDA holding up the approval of Anthrax vaccine as an example of how regulations can threaten national security. Here, unfortunately, she's woefully uninformed about the history behind that vaccine, as it was (probably still is) FAR from "perfectly fine". I was one of the unfortunate people in the military before 9-11 and was forced to take that crap. It wasn't even designed to prevent the type of anthrax exposure that could happen in a terrorist attack, but politically, it was a tactic to present the US military as "anthrax proof" to our enemies. The vaccine had its problems, though, and the FDA got that one right.

As I mentioned, the second half of the book somewhat descends into a wholesale comdemnation of the current political process, which, though it may be true in general, really isn't anything more than a bemoaning of the obvious with occasional hyperbole and "conventional wisdom" (rich are getting richer, they pay no taxes, blah blah blah...) thrown in. It's not unlike what I had to sit through in political science class back when I was 19, when I thought I could change the world too.

She gets some traction again near the end, when she finally gets back to identifying what she thinks is wrong with the profession and what could be done about it. She also points out, in several places, that we are turning into a society where there is no right and wrong, coming down on one side or the other is considered extremism and judging itself is becoming a lost art. Sadly, I kept getting the feeling that every time she wrote a verse like this, she'd follow it with something her Madison Avenue friends would find acceptable, as if she were grandstanding a bit.

So, though I enjoyed the book, I think the focus could have been more on the lawyers and the law profession itself instead of social commentary and repetition of favorite mantras of the useful idiots (e.g., environmentalist claims served to the reader as uncontestible conventional wisdom). Where she did comment on things outside her area of expertise, she probably could have done a little more research.

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.

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!

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! ;)

Great book detailing how Lawyers are ruining America. Easy read with great examples from both sides of the political isle.

Unfortunately, in the end I am just frustrated. I want to know specifically how to stop the leeches/lawyers from ruining my country. No one seems to have a solid answer! This book does a great job of getting you worked up! Now, I hope she writes a how-to book on fixing these problems!

As soon as we start making the bozo's pay for bringing frivolous lawsuits (i.e. the guy who sued McDonald's for making him fat) then maybe we can start down the road to fixing this problem!

I found this book fascinating. The information was very enlightening even if at times somewhat sarcastic. The book displays what so many people believe, but very few can put their finger on. There is a process in this country in which power is dispersed politically, financially and socially, and its not a process that the common man can readily grasp without, in many cases, falling prey to the process. Attorneys either through politics, lobbying or legal process guard and manipulate the disbursement of power for the benefit of themselves and their clients; and the greatest manipulations go to the greatest power players from all walks of life. Crier attacks both liberals and conservatives. To me she proved political persuasion is really nothing more than what special interest you want your dollar to to got to. Futhermore, law, as it is practiced today is form over substance. It is not necessarily right verus wrong as integrity would dictate, but what loophole can most effectively sidetrack, insuniate, or delegate accusation and outcome perceived by the attorney to most help their cause. Its in the head games of legal process that the attorney has the advantage over the lay person. People believe in most cases if they play by the rules they can get ahead, and attorneys want to foster this belief. Laywers realize if they are not winning they can just change the rules, and furthermore they realize most people really didn't know the rules to begin with. After reading this book it is easier to recognize the political chess games that politicians play in this country on both sides of the fence, and if you benefit or suffer from the current system the scope of information this book highlights will dicate your paradim in filtering political events today.

When even a Liberal like Catherine Crier can recognize the insidious problems lawyers have created in our country, you know the system desperately needs repair. While she does malign both the Right and Left, she finds more excuses for her beloved Liberal causes, and still wants the Government involved where reasonable people do not.

However, she does offer an insightful explanation for the meddlesome ness of the legal culture besides the obvious greed; and that is order. Attorneys simply love order, even when its effect is tyranny. Unfortunately in a free society sometimes chaos must reign. As Americans we must get used to being surprised again if the system is to be cleansed. After reading this, one will certainly think twice before electing another Lawyer to the Presidency, or any other public office.