flame suit on.
Most real progress in the civilized world stopped dead when lawyers became as prominent is society as they are now. The fear of being sued, especially in product liability killed private aircraft development for example. We get 50+ pages of safety homilies in car owners manuals. The "rule of law" was a fine idea until lawyers started being allowed to make laws.
flame suit off.
You make an interesting point, however, lawyers don't make laws, they make arguements in court. Judges are the ones who feel the need to create laws - judicial activism is a serious problem.
I agree about judicial activism in general but as long as legislators persist in not actually reading and understanding that which the legal draftsmen write and then, to make things worse, allow governments to pass skeleton laws and fill in the details by regulations with even less scrutiny the judges must have some discretion.
My point was that so many things are not done or severly restricted, things that have been allowed for years, because a lawyer suggests that there is a possibility of being sued. The recent one that comes to mind is the removal of equipment from playgrounds in TO schools in case the school board got sued when a kid got hurt.
Perhaps there are answers to my "complaint"
One would be to make access to law so expensive that people could not sue. This of course would mean no class actions and no contingency fees. AFAIK similar to the way the UK used to be.
Second would be to (re) introduce a concept of personal responsibility into everyday affairs that would override the "right to sue". Simple Example: The woman who scalded herself on McDonald's coffee. Coffee is hot... you spill it you get burnt too bad.
Other examples are in fact driven by the 'Precautionary Principle" which must have been invented by lawyers and thats what really stops progress. I am surprised that Burt Rutin's "Spaceship one" was ever allowed to fly without someone getting an injunction against it.
Maybe these injunctions against things in advance are part of the problem...