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| EST. READ TIME 1 MIN.Law and Markets: Is Canada Inheriting America's Litigious Legacy?
Countless class-action suits, preposterously large damage awards, and hordes of fast-buck lawyers - that is how most Canadians picture the American legal system. Yet that is not how we view Canada's legal system. We take for granted that our courts and lawyers are saner, less costly, and less disruptive. But is Canada immune from the legal lottery operating south of the border?
Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia now permit class-action suits. Our newspapers tell stories of increasingly costly legal settlements. We now graduate lawyers faster than the United States. Are the symptoms of the American legal malady already here? Are we inheriting America's litigious legacy?
This book draws together the opinions of distinguished American and Canadian legal scholars and researchers to address such critical questions as:
- What is happening in the United States and what legal innovations should we avoid?
- Has Canada already adopted American approaches to liability and negligence?
- How has Canada's legal system changed over the last 20 years?
- What legal innovations are being proposed today?
- How should we reform our courts and legal institutions?
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Owen Lippert
Owen Lippert is a former Senior Fellow and former Director of the Law and Markets Project at the Fraser Institute.He writes and researches on intellectual property, aboriginal, legal and trade issues. Previously, he served as a policy advisor to the federal Minister of Science, the Attorney General of Canada and to the Premier of British Columbia. He holds a Ph.D. in European History from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana and a B.A. from Carleton College, Minnesota. He has most recently edited and contributed to Competitive Strategies for Intellectual Property Protection (Fraser Institute, February 2000). His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal , National Post , Globe and Mail and many regional papers in Canada and the United States. He writes the Law and Economics column for Canadian Lawyer magazine.… Read more Read Less… -
John Robson
John Robson is deputy editorial pages editor and senior writer at the Ottawa Citizen. The views expressed in this articleare his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.… Read more Read Less… -
Stephen T. Easton
Stephen T. Easton was a professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University. He received his A.B. from Oberlin College in1970 and an A.M. in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Chicago. He published extensively; his publications included Rating Global Economic Freedom (with M.A. Walker, Fraser Institute 1992); Education in Canada: An Analysis of Elementary, Secondary and Vocational Schooling (Fraser Institute 1988); Legal Aid Efficiency: Cost and Competitiveness (with P.J. Brantingham and P.L. Brantingham, Queen's University 1994). He was also co-author of the School Report Card Series.Professor Easton was an associate editor for Economic Inquiry from 1980 to 1984, on the board of editors for the Canadian Journal of Economics from 1984 to 1987, organizer for the Canadian Economics Association's Canada-France Roundtable in 1988 and representative for the Canadian Economics Association to the Social Science Federation of Canada Aid to Scholarly Publications from 1991 to 1994. He was a senior research fellow of The Fraser Institute.… Read more Read Less…
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