Chapter Eight
"Law through the Looking Glass of Mass Politics"



This chapter summarizes the foregoing chapters and extends the arguments of the book.  Haltom and McCann first note how the lore of the law shapes national agendas.  "Knowledge" of and about civil litigation naturally reinforces simplistic claims that were derived, at least in part, from news reports, cinematic devices, and lawyer jokes in the first place.  These claims in turn inform the routines that news reporters follow and the presumptions that newsmakers share.  Insurance crises, widespread fears of excessive litigation, attacks on the avarice of attorneys, laments about "the litigation lottery," and other common sense have long since become the baseline from which public talk has proceeded.  Haltom and McCann argue that when news coverage, popular narratives, and policy debates each and all conform to such misleading and diversionary common sense, serious policy proposals and considered remedies are seriously disadvantaged.  That is, legal lore tends to divert public attention from serious reform of civil justice and to direct attention to panaceas and quick fixes.  Worse, news reporting, widely circulated tort tales, lawyer jokes, and other popular representations may combine to impose a moralistic discipline that at once discourages ordinary citizens from claiming their legal rights and alarms managerial elites about exaggerated liability for their actions.  When the publicizers of pop reforms stigmatize disputing and litigating, they thereby encourage stoic avoidance of conflict, personal insurance schemes, and other romantic prescriptions for a community of cooperative, responsible, and self-reliant individuals that may bear little relation to betterment of the lives of ordinary Americans.  Those prescriptions and narratives may insulate producers and professionals from legal accountability and may deflect attention from the undemocratic, unresponsive character of governance to a far greater degree than they improve the lot of ordinary consumers and citizens.

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