The American Illness Quotes

“Priest notes that part of the cost of American tort law comes from its unpredictability. Robert Kagan offered one example. A Japanese chemical company decided not to market an air freshener in the U.S. that it sells in large volumes in Japan because of the threat of some difficult-to-anticipate theory of liability. The product is designed to neutralize the smell of tobacco smoke. Even though the company could not see how the product might prompt litigation, it thought that American trial lawyers might be able to come up with some novel theory of liability.”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law

“Trial lawyers minded to defend America’s high litigation levels sometimes argue that, were they lower, we would require a greater degree of regulation. This assumes that litigation and regulation are substitutes: more of one, less of the other. That argument would be more persuasive if the regulatory burden were higher in other countries with lower litigation levels. That’s not the case, however. When first-world regulatory regimes have been compared, American regulatory law stands out as more detailed, complex, legalistic, and adversarial.”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law

“. It would also be helpful if (magically) we knew how many of a country’s lawyers were active in the practice of law, and how many of them were transactional lawyers. Finally, we would want to know whether lawyer-legislators are on average more likely to support legislation that promotes litigation.”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law

“no legal system is as consistently as pro-plaintiff as that of America, and that might give both sides pause. Comparative law is a two-way street. To take but one example, discussed by Michael Trebilcock, the Canadian Supreme Court has imposed damages caps for non-pecuniary losses, but when similar rules were enacted here by state legislatures, they were often struck down by state Supreme Courts. What is mandated there is prohibited here. If we are told to look to foreign law when it comes to capital punishment, then, we might also do so for the private law questions discussed in this book.”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law

“many foreign investors view the U.S. legal environment as a liability when investing in the United States.”21 Skeptics deride such statements as self-serving, but they are hard to ignore in the present economic environment. U.S. multinationals shed 864,000 U.S. jobs in the first decade of this century. The jobs are coming back, mind you, just not here. During the same period, U.S. multinationals increased employment overseas by 2.9 million.22 Similarly, the U.S. share of global foreign direct investment declined from 31 percent in 1980 to 13 percent in 2006.”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law

“Fuller’s procedural categories provide an inadequate definition of the rule of law. A legal regime might offer generality, publicity, clarity, consistency, constancy over time, and congruency with regulators, and still be a legal system from Hell. It might weaken property rights and impose civil liability on the flimsiest of grounds, all the while conforming to Fuller’s idea of law.”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law

“According to Fuller, laws should be (1) general, (2) publicly promulgated, (3) prospective (i.e., not retroactive), (4) clear, (5) consistent (i.e., not contain any contradictions), (6) practicable (i.e., not demand the impossible), (7) constant over time, and (8) congruent with the actions of officials. If we accept that list as defining the rule of law, America’s departures from it will be apparent to readers of this book.”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law

“It is conventional to distinguish between thick and thin definitions of the rule of law.12 A thick definition would include democratic institutions and the protection of personal and religious freedom. As I define it, a thin definition of the rule of law would include substantive private law rights: contracts are enforced and private parties are protected from looting by the state or other private parties. Countries that adhere to a thick definition are attractive places to live; countries that adhere to a thin definition are attractive places to do business.”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law

“there is little reason to think that interest group pressure is invariably benign, where a concentrated rich group (e.g., an industry association) competes against a dispersed and poorly organized group (e.g., consumers).”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law

“What corruption is for poor countries, lobbying is for rich ones, a means of obtaining political influence through the expense of money.9 No other country has anything like the number of American lobbyists who load up legislation with interest group bargains.”
― F.H. Buckley, The American Illness: Essays on the Rule of Law