A powerful new argument that right-wing legal policy gives Americans no recourse but to sue one another, by the National Book Critics Circle Award nominee. <BR>Since the dawn of the Reagan era, America's traditional legal structures have been gradually undermined, replaced by a kind of legal rage that has led to an explosion in the number of lawsuits. Why do Americans sue each other as often as we do and how has this basic rift in our civic trust come to pass? <BR>In an impassioned rebuttal to books such as Philip K. Howard's "The Death of Common Sense," which argue that liberals have made the United States overly litigious, public-interest lawyer and award-winning author Thomas Geoghegan explains why these books have it backwards. In reality, Geoghegan argues, it is the conservative revolution that opened the floodgates of litigation and helped to spur the lawsuit culture that Howard and others decry. According to Geoghegan, the country's current addiction to litigation and the need to find someone wrong is a natural response to the right's dismantling of America's postwar legal system--a system based on contract, trust, and administrative law, in which it was not necessary to go to court in order to stay solvent, keep your job, or recover from an accident. <BR>Sure to provoke heated debate, "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.

Chicago attorney Geoghegan is so entertaining that readers only now and then realize how much they are learning about law, a facet of society generally accessible only to initiates who know all the big words. Talking to plain folks about their own lives as well as their country, he discusses such matters as how charities came to prey on beneficiaries, why the right hates class action, how attacking litigation is increasing litigation, whether you really want to see a jury, and the case against civilization. There is no index: so sue him. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Thomas Geoghegan is a practicing attorney and the author of several books, including Which Side Are You On?, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and received a special citation from the PEN/Martha Albrand Award judges. He lives in Chicago.