Distorting the Law
Subtitle: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis
By: William Haltom and Michael McCann.
Contributors: McCann, Michael W., 1952-
Series: The Chicago series in law and society
Publisher: University of Chicago Press; University Of Chicago Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Chicago, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 347
Subjects: Actions and defenses -- Press coverage -- United States; Torts -- Press coverage -- United States; Law in mass media -- United States; Law and politics; Sociological jurisprudence
Description: In recent years, stories of reckless lawyers and greedy citizens have given the legal system, and victims in general, a bad name. Many Americans have come to believe that we live in the land of the litigious, where frivolous lawsuits and absurdly high settlements reign. Scholars have argued for years that this common view of the depraved ruin of our civil legal system is a myth, but their research and statistics rarely make the news. William Haltom and Michael McCann here persuasively show how popularized distorted understandings of tort litigation (or tort tales) have been perpetuated by the mass media and reform proponents. Distorting the Law lays bare how media coverage has sensationalized lawsuits and sympathetically portrayed corporate interests, supporting big business and reinforcing negative stereotypes of law practices. Based on extensive interviews, nearly two decades of newspaper coverage, and in-depth studies of the McDonald's coffee case and tobacco litigation, Distorting the Law offers a compelling analysis of the presumed litigation crisis, the campaign for tort law reform, and the crucial role the media play in this process --
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [307]-327) and index.
Table of contents: title: The social production of legal knowledge; title: Pop torts : tales of legal degeneration and moral regeneration; title: In retort : narratives versus numbers; title: ATLA shrugged : plaintiffs' lawyers play defense; title: Full tort press : media coverage of civil litigation; title: Java jive : genealogy of a juridical icon; title: Smoke signals from the tobacco wars; title: Law through the looking glass of mass politics.