This provocative book brings together twenty-plus contributors from the fields of law, economics, and international relations to look at whether the U.S. legal system is contributing to the country’s long postwar decline. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the interactions between economics and the law—in such areas as corruption, business regulation, and federalism—and explains how our system works differently from the one in most countries, with contradictory and hard to understand business regulations, tort laws that vary from state to state, and surprising judicial interpretations of clearly written contracts. This imposes far heavier litigation costs on American companies and hampers economic growth. This provocative book brings together contributors from the fields of law, economics, and international relations to examine the question of whether the U.S. legal system is contributing to the country’s long postwar decline. F. H. Buckley , a Foundation Professor at George Mason School of Law, has been published by the Journal of Legal Studies , the International Review of Law and Economics, and Public Choice. He is also the author of four books, including The Morality of Laughter , and the co-author of four books. The American Illness Essays on the Rule of Law By F.H. BUCKLEY Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright © 2013 F.H. Buckley All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-300-17521-9 Contents Acknowledgments............................................................xiPart 1: Introduction.......................................................The Rule of Law in America F.H. Buckley...................................3Part 2: Relative Decline...................................................An Exceptional Nation? F.H. Buckley.......................................43Part 3: Empirical Evidence.................................................Are Americans More Litigious? Some Quantitative Evidence J. Mark Ramseyer and Eric B. Rasmusen.......................................................69Lawyers as Spam: Congressional Capture Explains Why U.S. Lawyers Exceed the Optimum Stephen P. Magee..............................................100Regulation and Litigation: Complements or Substitutes? Eric Helland and Jonathan Klick.............................................................118Does Product Liability Law Make Us Safer? W. Kip Viscusi..................137Part 4: Civil Procedure....................................................The American Illness and Comparative Civil Procedure Daniel Jutras........159The Proportionality Principle and the Amount in Controversy Peter B. Rutledge...................................................................175The Allocation of Discovery Costs and the Foundations of Modern Procedure Martin H. Redish...........................................................201Does Increased Litigation Increase Justice in a Second-Best World? Jeremy Kidd and Todd J. Zywicki...................................................211Part 5: Tort Law...........................................................A Tamer Tort Law: The Canada-U.S. Divide Michael Trebilcock and Paul-Erik Veel.......................................................................229The Expansion of Modern U.S. Tort Law and Its Excesses George L. Priest...249Regulation, Taxation, and Litigation W. Kip Viscusi.......................270Part 6: Contract Law.......................................................An English Lawyer Looks at American Contract Law Michael Bridge...........291Text versus Context: The Failure of the Unitary Law of Contract Interpretation Robert E. Scott............................................312Exit and the American Illness Erin O'Hara O'Connor and Larry E. Ribstein..336The Dramatic Rise of Consumer Protection Law Joshua D. Wright and Eric Helland....................................................................361Part 7: Corporate and Securities Law.......................................How American Corporate and Securities Law Drives Business Offshore Stephen M. Bainbridge......................................................381Part 8: Criminal Law.......................................................Corporate Crime, Overcriminalization, and the Failure of American Public Morality Jeffrey S. Parker................................................407Part 9: How Nations Grow (or Don't)........................................The Legacy of Progressive Thought: Decline, Not Death, by a Thousand Cuts Richard A. Epstein.........................................................435Overtaking Robert Cooter and Aaron Edlin..................................472The Rule of Law and China Francis Fukuyama................................487Part 10: Changing Course...................................................Reversing F.H. Buckley....................................................505Contributors...............................................................527Index.....