In Jurismania, Paul Campos asserts that our legal system is beginning to exhibit symptoms of serious mental illness. Trials and appeals that stretch out for years and cost millions, 100 page appellate court opinions, 1,000 page statutes before which even lawyers tremble with fear, and a public that grows more litigious every day all testify to a judicial overkill, that borders on obsessive-compulsive disorder. Campos locates the source of such madness, paradoxically, in our worship of reason and the resulting belief that all problems are amenable to legal solutions.
With insightful discussions of a wide range of cases, from NCAA regulations of student-athletes to the Simpson trial, Campos shows that the mania for more law exacerbates the very problems it seeks to remedy. Clearly written, Jurismania gives us a CAT-scan of the American legal mind at work.
