Wednesday, December 11, 2002

From the New York Times "Is Litigation a Blight or Built In?" by Daphne Eviatar: Academics across the political spectrum point to state-run workers' compensation schemes as a rare example of a government-run alternative to litigation in America: a way to help injured workers without making them fight it out in court. Although such government-run systems have their drawbacks, even Mr. Olson, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, is surprisingly sanguine about them. In his forthcoming book, "The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens the Rule of Law," Mr. Olson warns that mass litigation has transformed lawyers and judges into an unelected "fourth branch of government." So to him, a workers' comp-style alternative to lawsuits would be an improvement. "It's so much more civilized," he said recently. The link requires a free subscription.

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