Amendment to Reduce Frivolous Litigation by Democratic Means

As a matter of policy, it is not good for people to be able to sue businesses for offenses 40% of Americans don't think are offenses because that means both that our laws are undemocratic and that businesses are not going to hire people or perform services they needlessly think they could be sued over in the future. This amendment is the only way to solve the problem because courts are bound to precedent and cannot rule a civil law unconstitutional on the grounds that the majority of people think the law is unwise or callous. The American people have more than enough authority that, when a rule is presented to them in clear terms, they can say whether it should be true or false. This ballot must be given in English, even if some American citizens can't understand it, because the Constitution and all laws and court opinions they could look up to determine why it is an issue are also written in English, and those need a chance of being understood. The Supreme Court can be considered liable if they are unable to write enough referendum questions because their authority over the precedents that cause more or less lawsuits to ensue is enough to make them take a harder stance against plaintiffs who probably shouldn't have even gone to court in the first place if they are pushed to do so.

Resolved by the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States (Two-thirds of both houses concurring therein) to have the following become an amendment to the Constitution when ratified by 3/4ths of the States.

Section 1

Presidential and congressional elections shall be held in every state on one day in the year before they are sworn in. That day shall be the first Saturday of November. Each American citizen in each election shall have one ballot on that day. This ballot shall include, with that election, referendums as described in the following section.

Section 2

A referendum is to be held on each civil case in the last two years and three months before three months prior to the referendum in which the defendant was forced, in the final decision, to give up something more valuable to them than $100. The Supreme Court shall write two questions for each such case in the form:

“Can a defendant be forced to give up ________ for committing _______?”

“Can a defendant be forced to give up something for committing _______?”

The possible answers for each shall be clearly labelled as:

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“No.”

Section 3

If more than 40% of the American citizens who answer the question answer “No.”, and it was the jury that first ruled against the defendant, each member of the jury shall give $100 plus twice the compensation they received since the beginning of the trial from the plaintiff, and the plaintiff shall return whatever is able to be returned.

If more than 40% of the American citizens who answer the question answer “No.”, and it was a higher court that ruled against the defendant, the ruling is overturned and whatever can be returned by the plaintiff shall be returned.

If more than 65% of the American citizens who answer the question clearly answer one way or the other on the first question, their answer is the law of the land and any future cases involving the same offense with within 10% of that punishment (the cases of this description shall only affect the defendant if the public answered “Yes.”) will not require another referendum. On the second question, if answered “Yes.”, the second question will not be repeated, but the first question shall be repeated if the penalty was different by more than 10%; an answer of “No.” means that it is illegal to accuse someone of the offense.

Multiple cases shall be answered together if they involved committing the very same offense and had punishments within 10% of each other, for which the mean of the punishments will be shown.

The description of the offense will be written in common man descriptive English, so if the defendant were accused of breaking someone’s arm for $10,000 damages, the first question shall be phrased as, “Can a defendant be forced to give up $10,000 for committing a malicious breaking of another person’s arm?”, and not, “Can a defendant be forced to give up $10,000 for committing assault?” Or, if the arm was alleged broken by slipping and falling on the defendant’s property, the second question would be phrased as “Can a defendant be forced to give up something for committing having their property be slippery enough to break an arm?” rather than “Can a defendant be forced to give up something for committing negligence in the upkeep of their property which results in injury?” even if using legal terms that are harder for the common man to understand result in better grammar and cover more cases. The reason for this is that voters need to know what it is that the plaintiff lost by the defendant doing or not doing something in order to determine whether the penalty is proportionate or whether the offense is justiciable.

Section 4

If the Supreme Court is unable to write all of the questions that this article requires, and the fraction of the questions that would be left to write is less than the square root of the fraction of cases they heard vs could have heard, then the Supreme Court will not be punished. If the percentage is equal to or greater than that, then one random member of the Supreme Court will switch with one random member of the lower tribunals at the time of the printing of the ballots.