The Case Against Lawyers

THE EMMY AWARD-WINNING HOST OF COURT TV'S "CATHERINE CRIER LIVE" DESCRIBES AN AMERICAN LEGAL SYSTEM DANGEROUSLY OUT OF CONTROL -- AND FINDS THE LAWYERS GUILTY AS CHARGED.As a child, Catherine Crier was enchanted by film portrayals of crusading lawyers like Clarence Darrow and Atticus Finch. As a district attorney, private lawyer, and judge herself, she saw firsthand how the U.S. justice system worked -- and didn't. One of the most respected legal journalists and commentators today, she now confronts a profoundly unfair legal system that produces results and profits for the few -- and paralysis, frustration, and injustice for the many. Alexis de Tocqueville's dire prediction in Democracy in America has come true: We Americans have ceded our responsibility as citizens to resolve the problems of society to "legal authorities" -- and with it our democratic freedoms.The Case Against Lawyers is both an angry indictment and an eloquent plea for a return to common sense. It decries a system of laws so complex even the enforcers -- such as the IRS -- cannot understand them. It unmasks a litigation-crazed society where billion-dollar judgments mostly line the pockets of personal injury lawyers. It deplores the stupidity of a system of liability that leads to such results as a label on a stroller that warns, "Remove child before folding." It indicts a criminal justice system that puts minor drug offenders away for life yet allows celebrity murderers to walk free. And it excoriates the sheer corruption of the iron triangle of lawyers, bureaucrats, and politicians who profit mightily from all this inefficiency, injustice, and abuse.The Case Against Lawyers will make readers hopping mad. And it will make them realize that the only response can be to demand change. Now. From the Hardcover edition.