Part One 

"Contesting Legal Realities"
 

Chapters Two through Four constitute Part One. These chapters describe and analyze instrumental dimensions of the political contest over tort reform:  Chapter Two profiles pro-business tort reformers;  Chapter Three covers socio-legal scholars; and Chapter Four examines the plaintiffs’ bar.  Each chapter elaborates the form and content of respective groups’ policy positions, then analyzes both evidence marshaled for and against these arguments.  These three chapters also assay the degree to which policy positions articulate with dominant ideological currents in American society.  An upshot of Part One is that tort reformers have focused their campaign on saturating the mass-mediated public space with their message, a commitment not  matched by their opponents in academia or in the trial bar.  While critics of tort reform have generally won the battle of empirical claims, they typically have had no answer to the reformers’ simple, ideologically powerful moral vision.



Questions?  Confusions?  Please contact the authors.