{"id":5089,"date":"2011-06-13T01:30:54","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T08:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5089"},"modified":"2011-06-13T01:30:54","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T08:30:54","slug":"us-ranks-low-on-legal-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/13\/us-ranks-low-on-legal-access\/","title":{"rendered":"US Ranks Low on Legal Access"},"content":{"rendered":"

Often I have heard Republican politicians and pundits suggesting that main street Americans have the courts  to protect them from unfair corporate practices.  First of all, Corporate criminals have spent $millions buying Representatives and Senators (Republicans and a few DINOs) to decriminalize their unethical behavior.  Moreover, main street Americans get little help from the courts, if they cannot get adequate legal representation.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"13legal\"The United States trails most of Western Europe in protecting the right of ordinary citizens to have access to a lawyer regardless of their ability to pay<\/strong>, according to a report released Monday.<\/p>\n

The World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index 2011<\/a> ranked the United States 21st among 66 countries<\/strong> it studied in assuring access to legal counsel. The U.S. did even worse when it came to affording a lawyer, ranking 52nd<\/strong>. Legal assistance is expensive or unavailable to the average person, according to the independent, global human rights group’s survey.<\/p>\n

"The rule of law is the cornerstone to improving public health, safeguarding participation, ensuring security, and fighting poverty," said World Justice Project founder William Neukom in a statement. "Without the rule of law, medicines do not reach health facilities due to corruption, women in rural areas remain unaware of their rights, people are killed in criminal violence, and economic growth is stifled."\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Huffington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n

About the only way most folks can afford a lawyer anymore is if the lawyer will take the case on contingency.  They do so because the most defendants settle, when they are clearly in the wrong, to avoid the prospect of punitive damages.  Without that prospect, lawyers would take far fewer contingency cases, because fewer defendants would settle, and because it would cost them more to take a case to trial than they would make for the case, without punitive damages.<\/font><\/p>\n

That is why Republicans always call for tort reform.  They want to finish blocking main street Americans\u2019 access to the courts.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Often I have heard Republican politicians and pundits suggesting that main street Americans have the courts  to protect them from unfair corporate practices.  First of all, Corporate criminals have spent $millions buying Representatives and Senators (Republicans and a few DINOs) to decriminalize their unethical behavior.  Moreover, main street Americans get little help from the courts, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}