Tort Law in America: An Intellectual History

by G. Edward White

Overview

This history of tort law in America looks at how the subject has been conceptualized, pointing out why changes in rules occurred, and who did the changing. White approaches his subject from four perspectives: intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge, the phenomenon of professionalization in the late 19th and 20th centuries in America, and the recurrent concerns of tort law since it became a discrete field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190281281
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/21/1985
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	375 KB

About the Author

G. Edward White is Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School and author of The American Judicial Tradition.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. The Intellectual Origins of Torts in America2. The Impact of Legal Science on Tort Law, 1880-19103. The Impact of Realism on Tort Law, 1910-19454. The Twentieth-Century Judge as Torts Theorist: Cardozo5. William Prosser, Consensus Thought, and the Nature of Tort Law, 1945-19706. The Twentieth-Century Judge as Torts Theorist: Traynor7. The 1970s: Neoconceptualism and the Future of Tort Law8. The Unexpected Persistence of Negligence, 1980-20009. Entering the Twenty-First CenturyNotesIndex

Editorial Reviews

"White has confirmed his reputation as one of the foremost figures in the field of American legal history."—Harvard Law Review

"[White] makes convincing sequence out of the muddy history of American tort law, tracing it from Victorian concepts of punishable wrongdoing through the dark thickets of negligence, contributory negligence and last clear chance, to the myriad modern conceptions of how the cost of accidents should be apportioned among the public....It is a brilliant and imaginative essay."—Louis Auchincloss

"An exciting chronicle of the development of an intriguing and currently important area of the law."—Marc A. Franklin, Stanford Law School

"White broadens our understanding of why we think of the law as we do and deepens our insight into its historical foundations."—Edward Purcell, author of The Crisis of Democratic Theory

From the Publisher