Tort Law in America An Intellectual History [Paperback]

Widely regarded as a standard in the field, G. Edward White'sTort Law in Americais a concise and accessible history of the way legal scholars and judges have conceptualized the subject of torts, the reasons that changes in certain rules and doctrines have occurred, and the people who brought about these changes.

Now in an expanded edition,Tort Law in Americafeatures a new preface that places the book within the current scholarship and two new chapters covering developments in American tort law over the past fifteen years. White approaches his subject from four perspectives: intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge, the phenomenon of professionalization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America, and the recurrent concerns of tort law since its emergence as a discrete field. He puts the intellectual history of this unique branch of law into the general picture of philosophy, sociology, and literature in what is not only a major work of legal scholarship but also a tour de force for anyone interested in American intellectual history.



Introduction
1. The Intellectual Origins of Torts in America
2. The Impact of Legal Science on Tort Law, 1880-1910
3. The Impact of Realism on Tort Law, 1910-1945
4. The Twentieth-Century Judge as Torts Theorist: Cardozo
5. William Prosser, Consensus Thought, and the Nature of Tort Law, 1945-1970
6. The Twentieth-Century Judge as Torts Theorist: Traynor
7. The 1970s: Neoconceptualism and the Future of Tort Law
8. The Unexpected Persistence of Negligence, 1980-2000
9. Entering the Twenty-First Century
Notes
Index

G. Edward Whiteis Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School and author ofThe American Judicial Tradition.