This book charts the history of civil litigation in America from the 17th century to today, using key cases that illustrate the central theme of lawsuits in different periods of U.S. history, and enabling readers to explore and understand key questions in American life and culture through the changing nature of how and why we sue one another.

Americans have long been identified as a people of law and lawyers with an addiction to lawsuits. In Litigation Nation, Peter Charles Hoffer, one of America's most preeminent legal historians, charts the history of civil litigation from the seventeenth century to the present, using key cases pursued by ordinary people to illustrate how the civil courts have been a battlefront to contest the boundaries of permissible personal conduct in times of social and political change. Using representative case studies from each period-from defamation suits in seventeenth-century America to recent civil rights and gender discrimination lawsuits, Hoffer's concise and accessible history shows how litigation reflects the lives and values of ordinary Americans.