Armin Weber

Failures of American Civil Justice in International Perspective: Civil Justice

America’s eighteenth-century founders expected of the nation’s future civil justice system that everyone “ought to obtain right and justice freely, without sale, completely and without denial, promptly and without delay.” They declared “that all establishments or regulations contravening these rights are oppressive and unjust.” Few lawyers today would say that American civil justice fulfills the founders’ expectations. Some say that it is oppressive and unjust. Many have given up the goals that the founders set. America’s reformers have run out of ideas. They have no proven models for fixing what they know is broken. This book provides a comparative critical introduction to civil justice systems in the United States, Germany, and Korea. It shows shortcomings of the U.S. system and compares them with German and Korean successes in attaining the expectations of America’s founders. The book shows foreign systems as a source of ideas that are already proven to promote American goals of right and just decisions, achieved by fair process, efficiently without delay, and available to all. The book informs general readers as well as specialists. For the former, it is written in a layman-friendly style. For the latter, it offers suggestions for further reading that permit checking the book’s analysis.

Failures of American Civil Justice in International Perspective: Judgments, Appeals, and Outcomes

1. Civil justice: an introduction 2. Legal method: thinking like a lawyer 3. Lawyers and legal systems: access to justice 4. The court: jurisdiction and applicable law 5. Pleading: the matter in controversy 6. Process: the right to be heard 7. Judgments, appeals and outcomes 8. Conclusion.