The Law of Torts (Hornbook)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent tort book
Review: An excellent book about tort law. The author revises every issues and explains clearly the subject. Dobbs quotes abundant cases and bibliography too. The content is : Part I. Introducing Tort Law; Part II: Physical interference with person or property; Part III, Operating and altering the tort system in personal injury cases. Finally, I must point out that this book (with 1600 pages) have an accurate updating.

Rating:
Summary: A fine hornbook
Review: This excellent volume was one of my own study aids during my first year of law school and it's now a valued part of my burgeoning law library.

If you're a One-L looking for study aids, this is a handy hornbook to have. Dobbs breaks the topic up into lots of subtopics and provides easily-digested discussions under each heading. The result is a longer book than Prosser and Keeton, but it's easier to read in many ways.

It's also more up-to-date; Prosser's classic work was most recenty updated in 1984, which means that much of the field (especially products liability) has left it in the dust. However, if you can possibly do so, try to get both: Prosser's more extended discussions are classics in the field, and deservedly so.

And if you want just _one_ text to supplement your casebook, I'd recommend _A Concise Restatement of Torts_, published by the American Law Institute. That's the text to use for "black-letter law."

Ideally, you can do what I did: get all three.

Rating:
Summary: This Book is a Tort Itself
Review: This is biased, pro-plaintiff, and hard to follow. It is a self-justifying, defender of the out of control legal profession. Only 60 pages are devoted to the defense. There is nary a word, beyond brief dismissal, of the devastation wrought upon our besieged Nation by the profession. There is nary a word about changing the unconscionable 80% error rate in tort litigation. There is nary a word about the wackiness that passes for judicial decision making, mind reading, fortune telling, etc.

If you have poor vision, good luck. A very large fraction of the text, often the most important point, is in tiny font in the footnotes. Its physical content discriminates against anyone with poor vision or who is out their twenties. The language is filled with double negatives, inscrutable constructions, undefined latin phrases. Is English the native language of either the author or his editor? My 7th grade English teacher would have made the author stand in the corner.

Memo to the editor: ban footnotes containing more than a reference. Ban double negatives. Take an English as a second language course, for Pete's sake.