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Wed 3 Mar, 2004 10:47 am
Walter Olson
Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is a graduate of Yale University. He has served as an adviser to political campaigns, testified several times before Congress, and appears frequently on TV shows such as Crossfire and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He writes regularly for such publications as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Reason, and his books include The Excuse Factory: How Employment Law is Paralyzing the American Workplace; The Litigation Explosion: What Happened When America Unleashed the Lawsuit; and most recently, The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America's Rule of Law.
http://www.hillsdale.edu/newimprimis/default.htm
Any chance there are case numbers for these decisions? They always seem like so much internet crapolla.
I think that the supreme court is the one with too much power.
A few odd cases don't mean an epidemic in society, however, there will always be problems in a system that thinks the poor, lazy should get rewarded from those who have more money - simply because they have more money. This is one of the problems with a democratic society - if most of the voters are poor/lazy then they can all decide to have other people give them money, and ruin the economy of the society. This is why there should be economic equality under law (by percentage.)
Juries will tend to sympathize with the "little guy" even when the little guy is wrong because they see the corporation as a corrupt money grubber with tons of cash to spare. But that is not how the legal system is supposed to work, it is not supposed to be a social/economic equalizer.
Longwinded account of the decline of our civilization. You could have summed it up that people want justice, can't find it, so they lash out. Making MacDonalds and the tobacco industry into victims is a joke too. They sell death and get away with it scott free. I'm not saying the way people are going about this is correct, but what is the alternative? Buyer has no choice but to be poisoned and addicted to it nonetheless so that a corporation can make a lot of money? Have you ever read, Brave New World? We aren't so far away from that all ready. I'm surprised bloodsucking Jewish limo lib lawyers wasn't inserted into this article somehow. As usual, a real problem is glossed over by bad consequences of the problem taking the rap for the whole problem, while the roots of the problem are ignored. Typical spin, and poorly executed at that.
I for one disagree with the current trend of viewing corporations as one of the evils of society. Corporations made America what it is. They should only be held accountable when they actually do something wrong. A close examination of the facts reveals that even the now infamous Haliburton is merely a victim of propaganda.
Throughout the past few decades, the government has always turned to Haliburton for large scale construction projects simply because they are the most experienced and are the only ones with the resources to pull them off. The so called price gouging of fuel for our troops was a byproduct of stringest congressional laws that forced Haliburton to get their fuel from the only source that met all the requirements, the most expensive one.
Corportions are not evils of our society. They should stop being portrayed as such.
Lawyers are a huge part of the problem.