A careful mix of law, policy, ethics, and economics, Studies in American Tort Law is designed for first-year torts courses. Recognizing that torts is a prime battleground for social policy, this book seeks to reflect not only the current rules on injury compensation, but also the policy choices underlying those rules. Within a clear, doctrinal framework, a range of views is presented, reflecting dominant themes in tort law. Students are introduced to, but not overwhelmed with, law and economics. Economic analysis is employed when particularly useful (e.g., in connection with the negligence balancing test, strict liability, and calculation of damages). The law-and-economics notes can be used as a starting point for classroom discussion, or they can be allowed to stand on their own, without need for elaboration. The fourth edition includes: * Comprehensive citations to the Restatement, Third, of Torts * The latest Supreme Court precedent on punitive damages and preemption * Readable statutory excerpts reflecting new legislative developments * Careful attention to ethical issues in the practice of law * Scores of citations to new court decisions * Several new principal cases. The fourth edition is completely up-to-date to 2009, including a rich selection of materials reflecting the abundance of important recent developments in tort law. A comprehensive teacher's manual updated for the fourth edition, Teaching Torts, will be available. Mastering Torts: A Student's Guide to the Law of Torts (4th ed.), a short narrative text which parallels the casebook, assists students to fully understand this area of law. A Power Point file containing roughly 200 slides corresponding to Studies in American Tort Law is available to adopting professors. To request the file, contact Vincent R. Johnson at [email protected].

Mastering Torts presents in a clear, narrative form a doctrinal overview of the law of torts. Designed especially for law students, this hornbook-like treatment is a mixture of doctrinal condensation and factual exploration that can be used with the fourth edition of Studies in American Tort Law or with other torts casebooks.

"This book has evolved out of a series of jointly authored articles on torts that we published in law reviews between 2013 and 2021."--

"Tort law, the law of how the costs of accidents and other harms should be allocated, is part of America's larger story of social conflict and progress. The Burdens of All is the first book to fully recount tort law's place in that story. The book describes the law's struggle to move from nineteenth-century individualism, which required accident victims to shift for themselves and protected corporations, to the view that accidents are an inevitable part of modern industrial society and must be paid for by society as a whole. Also, the book paints vivid pictures of the judges and social reformers who have shaped tort law's course; the current struggle between individualism and socialization; and the historical struggle over the proper balance of power between judges and juries in tort cases. Its wealth of information and insights will intrigue law- and social-history devotees alike"--

Tort law, a fundamental building block of every legal system, features prominently in mass culture and political debates. As this pioneering anthology reveals, tort law is not simply a collection of legal rules and procedures, but a set of cultural responses to the broader problems of risk, injury, assignment of responsibility, compensation, valuation, and obligation. Examining tort law as a cultural phenomenon and a form of cultural practice, this work makes explicit comparisons of tort law across space and time, looking at the United States, Europe, and Asia in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. It draws on theories and methods from law, sociology, political science, and anthropology to offer a truly interdisciplinary, pathbreaking view. Ultimately, tort law, the authors show, nests within a larger web of relationships and shared discursive conventions that organize social life.

Christina Brooks Whitman, Francis A. Allen Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School --