The American Spectator

THE BOLDEST PROFESSION br> Re: Michael Craig’s Hooray for Lawyers! /p> p>Okay, I have to admit, the 99.97% of lawyers that are sleaze bags give the rest a bad name. br> — Glen Schorzman br> Port Arthur, TX /p>

The damage that trial lawyers have done to industry and, more recently, to medical service is appalling. The common gripe about many of the trial lawyers who play the personal injury field is that they are greedy creeps, who misuse the legal system to add money to their wallets and notches on their guns.

That may be, but I would argue that there is a more harmful effect from their gaming the system: it diminishes the respect for the rule of law.

Compare us to a number of other countries that have copied their constitutions from ours, but which have nowhere near the same level of freedom and protections that we enjoy. It seems that it is not our Constitution or “democracy” that separates us from the third world, but rather it’s our respect for the rule of law.

We elect our leaders by a set of laws, and we expect those leaders to uphold all of our laws. We even play a wide range of sports-more so than other countries-according to formal rules, in a make-play extension of our respect for the rule of law. Above all, we expect that those in positions of power and influence will not manipulate laws to gain undue advantage over us, or in spite of us.

It’s disturbingly commonplace to hear that our legal system has become a joke. The Menendez brothers and Simpson trials in California; judgments for people who are fearful that they might get asbestosis; breast implant judgments based on junk science; and the judgment for a woman who, through her own carelessness, spilled hot coffee on herself are just some of the legal stories that the public notice and digest. Stories of venue shopping and paying off “witnesses” add to the notion that the legal system can be manipulated quite easily.

Additionally, I believe, rightly or wrongly, that being able to punish another person (human or corporation) in a civil court is a serious flaw in our legal system. Persons should have a right to recover losses, but only the state should have the authority to punish and to receive any fines from such punishment, and that punishment should be judged in a criminal court.