More Lawyers or More Justice?

Proponents of legal reform sometimes resemble the proverbial blind men inspecting an elephant. Depending on which part of the unfamiliar animal they are touching, the sightless examiners may think they are holding a tree trunk (leg), snake (trunk), rope (tail), spear (tusk), or fan (ear). The moral is that perspectives vary, producing widely disparate results.

So it is with critiques of our legal system. The conventional analysis is that more lawyers, more laws, and more procedure will produce more justice. But in Rebooting Justice, University of Tennessee law professor Benjamin Barton and University of Pennsylvania law professor Stephanos Bibas approach the topic from a different point of view and reach surprisingly different conclusions.