All’s been quiet on the Stephanos Bibas nomination front since the silly blue-slip flap a month ago.
But Jonathan Adler wasn’t joking when he observed that Bibas is quite prolific, so, naturally, Bibas has a new book out. It’s entitled Rebooting Justice: More Technology, Fewer Lawyers, and the Future of Law, co-authored with fellow law professor Benjamin Barton (who strikes me as a liberal-leaning guy from his CV, for those hunting for more tea-leaves about Bibas’s ability to function effectively on a court with diverse perspectives).
The book’s publisher’s page says this:
America is a nation founded on justice and the rule of law. But our laws are too complex, and legal advice too expensive, for poor and even middle-class Americans to get help and vindicate their rights. Criminal defendants facing jail time may receive an appointed lawyer who is juggling hundreds of cases and immediately urges them to plead guilty. Civil litigants are even worse off; usually, they get no help at all navigating the maze of technical procedures and rules. The same is true of those seeking legal advice, like planning a will or negotiating an employment contract.
Rebooting Justice presents a novel response to longstanding problems. The answer is to use technology and procedural innovation to simplify and change the process itself. In the civil and criminal courts where ordinary Americans appear the most, we should streamline complex procedures and assume that parties will not have a lawyer, rather than the other way around. We need a cheaper, simpler, faster justice system to control costs. We cannot untie the Gordian knot by adding more strands of rope; we need to cut it, to simplify it.
A review by Jonathan Knee in the New York Times Dealbook page is here. And one of Barton’s law-school colleagues, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, has an essay in USA Today here.