We need to stop increasing the number and scope of immunities that protect scores of industries, products, institutions and people from exposure to civil liability. We should instead reconsider many of these immunities, especially because they foster an epidemic that many call “the death of the jury trial.” The death of the jury trial is caused by many factors, such as the expense of litigation, the push for mediation and arbitration, and the lack of trial experience of many lawyers. Jury trials expose what philosopher Lon Fuller once called “the indecencies in power” to the public.

Immanuel Kant once said that, in what he called a categorical imperative, we should treat one another “never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” That rarely happens in the real world, where most peoples’ sense of being a unique person is derived by many of the industries, products, institutions and people on which, or on whom, state and federal legislatures confer immunity from civil liability. If you are injured while at a park or a reservoir, the Recreational Use Immunity Statute deprives the injured person from recovering money damages. Vaccine administrators and manufacturers are protected by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Oil companies are protected by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. Medical devices are protected from state court claims by the Medical Device Amendments of 1976. Governments are protected by sovereign immunity. The list of immunities is long, too long.

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