Walter Olson and David Bernstein, 55 Md. L. Rev. 1161 (1996).

The "loser-pays" principle serves a variety of compelling moral and practical objectives, including curbing speculative litigation and compensating those victimized by it. Alaska has followed such a rule since territorial days, and several other states have experimented with it in recent years. At the federal level, as part of the GOP "Contract with America", the U.S. House of Representatives in 1995 passed a (seriously flawed) loser-pays measure which then went nowhere in the Senate. Most of the rest of the world follows the rule, and it’s time we did the same.