A01=Thomas F. Burke
accident litigation
america
american culture
american government
american society
americans with disabilities act
Author_Thomas F. Burke
california
case study
Category=JP
constitutional tradition
court centered policies
dispute resolution
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
greed
lawsuits
lawyers
legal rights
legal system
litigation
litigious policies
no fault auto insurance system
political culture
politics of litigation
public life
public policies
united states
vaccine injury compensation act
Product details
- ISBN 9780520243231
- Weight: 408g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 12 Oct 2004
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Lawsuits over coffee burns, playground injuries, even bad teaching: litigation 'horror stories' create the impression that Americans are greedy, quarrelsome, and sue-happy. The truth, as this book makes clear, is quite different. What Thomas Burke describes in "Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights" is a nation not of litigious citizens, but of litigious policies - laws that promote the use of litigation in resolving disputes and implementing public policies. This book is a cogent account of how such policies have come to shape public life and everyday practices in the United States. As litigious policies have proliferated, so have struggles to limit litigation - and these struggles offer insight into the nation's court-centered public policy style. Burke focuses on three cases: the effort to block the Americans with Disabilities Act; an attempt to reduce accident litigation by creating a no-fault auto insurance system in California; and the enactment of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act. These cases suggest that litigious policies are deeply rooted in the American constitutional tradition.
Burke shows how the diffuse, divided structure of American government, together with the anti-statist ethos of American political culture, creates incentives for political actors to use the courts to address their concerns. The first clear and comprehensive account of the national politics of litigation, his work provides a new way to understand and address the 'litigiousness' of American society.
Thomas F. Burke is Assistant Professor at Wellesley College and Research Fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholars in Health Policy Program at the University of California, Berkeley.
