Law and Community

Reviews / Votes

American law is comparatively individualistic compared to other legal systems, and tort law is the heartland of that individualism. Nonetheless, Cochran and Ackerman have discovered significant concerns for community and the common good even within our tort law. By drawing these apparent anomalies to our attention, and by developing their possible implications for tort law and our legal system generally, they have made an enormous contribution. They have helped us speak again in other ways than we are used to. May their voices reverberate in many quarters! -- Robert N. Bellah A book both timely and timeless. One does not have to be a lawyer to understand the questions Professors Ackerman and Cochran raise or the clarity with which they explore possible answers. A purely individualistic view of rights and responsibilities will not suffice, the authors suggest. The reader will be caught up in-and profit immeasurably from-thinking about the authors' efforts to produce better answers than the law so far provides. -- Thomas D. Morgan, George Washington University Law and Community is a path-breaking book. Drawing on the law of torts for examples, the authors explore with authority what is virtually unknown territory in American law: the ways in which our legal system does and does not attend to the intermediate structures of civil society upon which our great democratic experiment silently depends. -- Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See