Distorting the Law: Politics, Media, and the Litigation Crisis
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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.
1The social production of legal knowledge12Pop torts : tales of legal degeneration and moral regeneration333In retort : narratives versus numbers734ATLA shrugged : plaintiffs' lawyers play defense1115Full tort press : media coverage of civil litigation1476Java Jive : genealogy of a juridical icon1837Smoke signals from the tobacco wars2278Law through the looking glass of mass politics265
