Community Law

COMMUNITY LAW: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN APPROACH TO THE USE OF LAW

This study examined the transformation of the American approach to the use of law. This transformation has occurred primarily since the early1960s, although many of the trends present in this transition have origins preceding the 1960s.

The Changing Character of the American Approach to the Use of Law

The highly respected British news weekly, The Economist, said, in 1991, that "Americans who don't take out their frustrations with a gun tend to do so with a lawsuit."1 Such was not always the case in the United States. "Our common law tradition, like the legal tradition of other nations, viewed a lawsuit as an evilat best, a necessary evil."2 In the relatively recent past in the United States, "lawyers were specifically forbidden to 'stir up' litigation."3 Public interest groups and lawyers themselves began to challenge this notion in the late1950s and early1960s.4 By the mid1970s, lawsuits had come, by many persons in American society, "to be seen as splendid vessels for deterring misconduct and

1"Cover Your Assets," The Economist, 10 August 1991, 30.

2Walter K. Olson, "The Selling of the Law," American Enterprise, 2 (January/February 1991): 27.

4H. Tolley, "Interest Group Litigation to Enforce Human Rights," Political Science Quarterly, 105 (Winter 19901991): 617638; R. B. Conlin, "'Litigation Explosion': Tempest in A Teapot," Trial, Nove

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Category: Government - C