An Oil Strike in Hell! Contemporary Legends About the Civil Justice System

Abstract

Contemporary discourse about the civil justice system is laced with a set of resilient legends that are often mistaken for the products of systematic social inquiry. Many of these legends are connected with the "jaundiced view" that derides the civil justice system as unfair and mischievous. The prominence of the jaundiced view and the persistence of these legal legends are supported by a deficient knowledge base in conjunction with cognitive biases, media distortions, professional and political opportunism, interacting with the inherent indeterminacy of the legal system, and general ambivalence about the expansion of remedy.