Are there too many lawsuits in the U.S.?

Americans spend billions of dollars every year for the sole purpose of resolving disputes with one another. It’s great for lawyers, but it adds nothing of value to the country’s gross national product. In reality, the enormous amount of money spent on lawsuits actually reduces our overall productivity as a country. And as a result, many American companies are uncompetitive with foreign companies who do not have these litigation expenses, and this of course contributes to the loss of jobs in the United States.

No other country in the world devotes so much of its gross national product to this process of resolving disputes with one another. To make the point, let’s remove from consideration all of the countries that provide very few rights to their citizens and make the comparison only between countries with similarly sophisticated judicial systems – the United States, Canada, England, Australia, Western Europe, and Japan. Of all these countries only the United States has any significant amount of civil lawsuits. Why? Is everyone in all these other countries less happy? Does everyone in other countries think they live in an unjust environment where their complaints go unheard? The next time you have an opportunity to talk with someone from one of these countries ask them if they feel they live in an unjust land with an ineffective legal system. I have asked these questions, and no one I have spoken with can frankly understand the American fixation on lawsuits.

Why are we like this? America has become the great nation it is by focusing on individual rights and individual freedoms, guaranteed to us in our constitution, our bill of rights, and now, countless federal and local statutes. This focus has allowed us to achieve greatness by creating a free spirit of entrepreneurism, an I-can-do-anything attitude that drives people to achieve their highest potential. But the focus on individual rights, at the expense of group rights, unfortunately also creates an attitude of entitlement that propels people into court whenever they believe their rights have been violated, and they might gain some compensation for that insult from. We need a better balance in this country between the rights of individuals and the rights of society at large.