Description

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While just about everyone agrees that we've become a lawsuit nation, is it really class actions by a coterie of private trial lawyers whose enormous settlements and, in Karl Rove's words, "junk lawsuits" that are subverting democracy? Thomas Geoghegan, whom Time called "a modern-day Quixote of the legal profession," thinks not.

In this impassioned rebuttal to Philip K. Howard's The Death of Common Sense, Geoghegan deftly shows how conservatives' dismantling of America's postwar legal system opened the floodgates of litigation. Most often people sue, he argues, because of what they have lost--contract rights, pensions, health insurance, decent medical care, and strong unions. Without these methods of preempting and resolving disputes, Americans who face injury, bankruptcy, discrimination, or injustice are left with no recourse but the lawsuit.

Both smart and provocative, See You in Court shows why the right is wrong about the source of our lawsuit culture and points the way back to civil society.

About the Author

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Thomas Geoghegan is a practicing attorney and the author of several books, including In America's Court: How a Civil Lawyer Who Likes to Settle Stumbled into a Criminal Trial, the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Which Side Are You On?: Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back, See You in Court: How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation, and Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life, all published by The New Press. He has written for The Nation, the New York Times, and Harper's. He lives in Chicago.