How Lawsuits Help Democracy

When most people think of the defining tenets of modern democracy, lawsuits probably don’t come to mind. But in her new book In Praise of Litigation, Alexandra Lahav argues that they should–because they are the best way for citizens to protect their rights. Consider Casale v. Kelly, in which homeless people arrested for loitering and begging in New York sued the city, arguing their First Amendment rights had been violated. (Police eventually stopped the arrests after a federal judge held the City of New York in contempt.) Or the 1971 Supreme Court case allowing the press to publish the Pentagon Papers, which demonstrated that the government was not above the law. “Bad things happen,” Lahav writes, “and those who believe they have been wronged want and deserve an explanation, a remedy and a way to prevent the same thing from happening in the future to them or to others.”

–SARAH BEGLEY