Chapter Two reviews popular campaigns and publicized narratives that have advanced the cause of tort reform.  Haltom and McCann demonstrate that, while reforms of civil justice have been advanced for decades, business-supported “pop” publicizers have secured greatest visibility because their core messages about a litigation crisis are easily translated into familiar mass media scripts and routine rants by political and legal elites. In other words, tort reformers have suffused the polity with pop-tort portraits and proposals that are more available, accessible, adaptable, and actionable than is information to the contrary.  Those who routinely watch, read, or listen to the news thus learn of narratives and notions that are neither precisely right nor exactly wrong, and such common learning reinforces various proposals for reforming the tort regime.  And the more available, accessible, adaptable, and actionable that proposals and arguments supporting proposals are, the more that reform popularizers and media pundits persuade themselves anew.

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