Abstract: We know the stereotype: People around the world see American
citizens as eager to sue and American judges as powerful shapers of the
social order. Yet we find it hard to measure the magnitude of that
eagerness and power. In this article we examine some of the problems
involved in quantitatively measuring how the courts’ role in America
compares to other nations. We suggest that the notoriety of the U.S. does
not result from the way citizens and judges handle routine disputes, which
(different as it may be in developing countries) is not very different from
in other wealthy, democratic societies,. Instead, American notoriety
results from the peculiarly dysfunctional way judges handle disputes in
discrete legal areas such as class actions and punitive damages