See You in Court

How the Right Made America a Lawsuit Nation

A Chicago Tribune Favorite Book of 2007—a bold new argument that conservative policy has led to America's lawsuit culture, from the National Books Critics Circle Award finalist

“Charming. . . . Ambitious . . . eminently readable.” —Adam Liptak, The New York Times

While just about everyone agrees that we’ve become a lawsuit nation, is it really class actions by a coterie of private trial lawyers whose enormous settlements and, in Karl Rove’s words, “junk lawsuits” that are subverting democracy? Thomas Geoghegan, whom Time called “a modern-day Quixote of the legal profession,” thinks not.

In this impassioned rebuttal to Philip K. Howard’s The Death of Common Sense, Geoghegan deftly shows how conservatives’ dismantling of America’s postwar legal system opened the floodgates of litigation. Most often people sue, he argues, because of what they have lost—contract rights, pensions, health insurance, decent medical care, and strong unions. Without these methods of preempting and resolving disputes, Americans who face injury, bankruptcy, discrimination, or injustice are left with no recourse but the lawsuit.

Both smart and provocative, See You in Court shows why the right is wrong about the source of our lawsuit culture and points the way back to civil society.

Praise

“Good fun . . . [Geoghegan’s] a sharp thinker. . . . See You in Court makes a good case that deregulation has damaged the justice system in many ways.”
Chicago Reader
“Entertaining . . . breezy. . . . The essential charm of Geoghegan’s writing is his honest, self-deprecatory style.”
The Washington Monthly

Books by Thomas Geoghegan

Which Side Are You On?
Trying to Be for Labor When It’s Flat on Its Back

Thomas Geoghegan

Only One Thing Can Save Us
Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement

Thomas Geoghegan

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?
How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life

Thomas Geoghegan

In America’s Court
How a Civil Lawyer Who Likes to Settle Stumbled into a Criminal Trial

Thomas Geoghegan

Goodreads Reviews