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29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Verdict: Lawyers and Politicians Guilty As Charged, November 12, 2002
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.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Highly recommended, January 28, 2003
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.
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20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AT LAST: The Non-Partisan, Non-Polemic, Unvarnished Truth!, November 1, 2002
By A Customer
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.
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