Beyond Academia

Gregory Keating never liked the characterization of civil tort attorneys as ambulance chasers.

In his book Reasonableness and Risk: Right and Responsibility in the Law of Torts (Oxford University Press), the USC Gould School of Law professor writes about how tort law is not fundamentally about sticking it to rich corporations. At its core, the law of torts is about protecting ordinary people against harm.

Personal injury lawyers, sometimes disparaged as opportunists who profit from innocent corporate mistakes, serve an important role in the civil justice system. Although Keating meant his book to counter the economic view of tort law in academia, it resonated with civil attorneys in the field.

Keating’s book won the National Civil Justice Institute’s 2024 Civil Justice Scholarship Award in February.

“Winning this award shows you’ve reached an important audience among lawyers and are not just writing for an academic audience,” Keating says. “In academic communities, this is a significant book. When you write a book that argues against the economic idea that tort law is a system for pricing injuries to life and limb, you don’t expect to get a large audience. Finding out I connected with practicing lawyers is the real value of this award.”

The Civil Justice Scholarship Award is given annually to one scholarly book that supports the American civil justice system. Keating, who joined the USC Gould School of Law faculty in 1991 and is the William T. Dalessi Professor of Law and Philosophy, attended the award reception in Austin, Texas.

In contrast to criminal wrongs punishable by the state, torts are civil wrongs for which those harmed may seek remedy. Modern tort law centers around accidental harm, such as auto accidents, airplane crashes, oil spills, and the health crisis caused by tobacco and opioid addiction.

“It seems like a mistake to think of life and limb just as things that can be bought and sold in the market, which is really the underlying idea of the economic view of tort law,” Keating says. “When death, devastating injury, and other forms of serious harm are at stake, fundamental interests of persons are implicated. Long-dead scholars of the common law had it right when they compared tort to constitutional law. Constitutional law protects people from harm at the hands of the State. Tort law protects us from harm at each other’s hands.”

In the book, Keating seeks to rediscover the vital role of tort law, which he argues is essential to articulate and enforce people’s obligations to respect each other’s physical and psychological integrity, property, privacy, freedom of action and reputation.

“People need safety to have happy and successful lives,” Keating says. “They need to be protected from harm, and people who commit harm should be responsible for cleaning it up.”

In February, Reasonableness and Risk was the subject of a symposium held at USC and jointly sponsored by the USC Center for Law and Philosophy Book Symposium and Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Keating presented the book internationally as an annual endowed lecturer at Western Law in Ontario, Canada, last September, at a workshop at the University of Oxford last November, and in March at a conference devoted to the book at the University of Girona in Spain.