To an ever growing degree, successful businesses seem like treasure ships to be plundered by legal buccaneers.  So, understandably, business leaders clamor for "tort reform" legislation.  But it seems that they're wasting their time.  According to Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), state courts had declared "unconstitutional" 90 tort reform laws during the 16 years prior to November, 2000.  Many of the "constitutional" provisions offended by the laws in question had been fabricated by judges.  Evidently, our judicial employees will not obey any legislative limitations on their power unless they have good cause to fear retribution by a motivated and well informed public [1].

Business groups that demand "tort reform" need to see the problem in historical perspective.  Contemporary perverse trends in tort law merely represent one aspect of a much broader perversion of our legal system.  Throughout our history, America's judicial branch of government has relentlessly enlarged its power at the expense of legislative bodies accountable to "We The People" [2].

Lawyers and judges of every era schemed to gain, exercise, and consolidate "judicial supremacy," while claiming that they were only defending "judicial independence" or "seperation of powers."  Courts now make most of our important new laws.  And chronic abuse of judicial power makes a mockery of our constitutional guarantee of a "Republican Form of Government" [2].

Business elites, over the years, helped make the abuse of judicial power routine.  They found it convenient to arrange that important political decisions be made by courts rather than by elected politicians accountable to the masses.  Now they're at risk of being consumed by the monster they helped create [2].
 

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