The university where I work has, in the past, allowed summer interns. Students from other universities who wanted research experience, would come here over the summer and join a lab. The students would benefit from learning about how research works with all the skills that entails, procuring letters of recommendation for future applications to grad school, and having an intellectual enriching summer experience. The labs were enriched by having new perspectives shared (students would bring methods and ideas from their home universities with them), and getting labor to run studies that would otherwise be unaffordable. Science and society benefited because university research is a public good and more of it was being produced for no additional cost, and because scientific networks were expanded and enriched, which increased the quality of future research.
Then a summer intern fell while on campus, and hurt himself. And sued the university for the injury. I don’t know the specifics of the case. But I do know the repercussions – the university, worried about the cost of litigation for unpaid employees, created a new policy forbidding unpaid interns. This year, I got about 20 requests from students to work in my lab. I had to turn them down, so they don’t get that summer experience. My lab doesn’t get that research assistance, which limits the number of studies we can run. Society doesn’t get the benefits of the knowledge that those studies would have produced. And this policy creates no benefits, aside from keeping the university safe from litigation.
In other words, the threat of litigation has crippled a system that previously had produced tons of good with no obvious downsides. Society becomes less efficient as a result. This process is hardly unique to education. It also reduces efficiency in health care, transportation, entertainment, consumer goods, museums, restaurants… well, pretty much every industry, actually. In other words, because of the way the legal system works, and the increasingly litigious nature of society, America is slowly but inexorably becoming less efficient. Increasingly, resources are going into protection from law suits instead of improving quality of life.
Legal reform is one of the more pressing issues facing the country, because fixing this will greatly facilitate fixing other broken systems (e.g. health care). So, I raise the question for the leftfielders – how ought the legal system be reformed? Is it even possible?
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