Distorting the Law

Distorting the Law Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis - The Chicago Series in Law and Society

Paperback (05 Oct 2004)

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Publisher's Synopsis

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.

Book information

ISBN: 9780226314648
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Imprint: The University of Chicago Press
Pub date:
DEWEY: 346.7303
DEWEY edition: 22
Language: English
Number of pages: 332
Weight: 540g
Height: 155mm
Width: 230mm
Spine width: 20mm