Reductio ad Totalitarianism by Robert W. Tracinski of The Ayn Rand Institute takes trial lawyers to task for feeding off one industry after another. Excerpt:
"The anti-fast-food suits are a logical extension of the premise behind the anti-tobacco suits: the denial of individual responsibility. The courts used to recognize the principle that manufacturers are not responsible for the misuse of their products -- that if individuals choose to smoke too much, or eat too much, or shoot innocent people, then the manufacturers of cigarettes, fast food, and firearms cannot be held responsible. [...] The cost of abandoning the principle of personal responsibility is a kind of decentralized totalitarianism -- what legal scholar Walter Olson calls 'the rule of lawyers' -- in which the individual's judgment about how to live is constantly being overruled by the latest lawsuit."Posted by Forkum at July 11, 2003 08:01 AM
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