You're absolutely right! The US is pretty hard-headed on any number of subjects, reasonable or otherwise. A lot of these are great ideas.

Formalizing into law the system where a judge decides what is a reasonable amount of attorney's fees definitely sounds like an improvement! Though I can see where revamping the fundamental structure of a legal system could be challenging, time-consuming, and probably messy.

I don't think it is just being hard headed. I don't know of a practical non-disruptive way to change the basis of the US legal system away from common law.

Edit: not that I support the legal status quo, I just don't see the public bipartisan will to make that level of systemic reform

That's pretty much what I mean by hard headed, no one is willing to consider change. Not an individual, just the people that create laws and policies.

Yeah no kidding. Common law is perhaps at the heart of how rich Americans understand the state. And then the overrepresentation of lawyers in legislatures just makes this worse. Either way, this stuff is completely sacrosanct for no good reason.

>this stuff is completely sacrosanct for no good reason.

Evolved law systems, like common law, do have some elegance that most people tend to overlook. Here's one article I found very interesting:

http://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/ECM_PRO_060886.pd...