Authority in the Dock

Abstract

A way of examining the current "litigation explosion" is to consider the kinds of cases and legal issues that litigation now involves and compare them with what litigation used to involve fifty or one hundred years ago. Instead of inquiring only whether there is relatively more litigation today in quantitative terms, our inquiry can address the social and political characteristics of what might be called the "new litigation." Such an inquiry can consider not only the types of conduct directly involved but also changes in substantive law that emerge from litigation, the impact of these changes in the law on behavior patterns in the community at large, the relationship between legal norms and behavior patterns, and the effects on the community's system of authority considered as a whole.