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The idea that Americans are inherently litigious has for so long been imprinted on the American mind that it has been accepted as conventional wisdom, and observations to the contrary seem counterintuitive. Whether one looks at the contemporary media, insurance copy, American Bar Association literature, or speeches by leading judges or Evangelicals, or academic writings such as those of Kagan (1981) or Auerbach (1983), the generalization is there: Americans are a litigious people, “the most litigious people in the world,” according to the many public presentations of the former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Warren Burger. The challenge to the notion that Americans are inherently litigious has come in the form of careful examination of the statistics used to support the increase in litigation theory (Galanter, 1983, 1986), and surveys comparing data from the United States with that of other industrial democracies (Johnson and Drew, 1978). In Praying for Justice Greenhouse uses another kind of data, and while her book does not disprove the stereotypical image of the litigious American, at least she offers another picture: of Americans who not only avoid legal action but who have even developed a set of injunctions against conflict and the voicing of interpersonal disputes. Greenhouse's book is part of a growing body of work that finds, contrary to the popular stereotype, Americans seem to prefer avoidance, or negotiation, to other modes of dispute resolution.
