How Policy Shapes Politics: Rights, Courts, Litigation, and the Struggle Over Injury Compensation (Studies in Postwar American Political Development) - Hardcover

The contribution of the book is a map of policy complexity with a focus on two engaging "policy designs," adversarial and bureaucratic legalism. In this it advances the tradition of law and society scholarship by linking scholarship from the broader and more sophisticated study of law to the field through three lively cases. (J. Brigham, University of Massachusetts, CHOICE)

Brilliant! How Policy Shapes Politics is a landmark. It shows that how we compensate for injuries or illness is a fateful policy choice. One path leads to sharp political conflict with big winners and losers, the other to stable, reasoned and reasonable distribution of costs and benefits. Richly based in evidence and elegantly composed, this study is a must-read for scholars of law, tort litigation, and how public policies- including judicial decisions- shape politics. (Charles R. Epp, Professor, School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas)

I know of no book that does a better job explaining how 'adversarial legalism' shapes public policy. Using well-crafted case studies and carefully designed quantitative analysis, Barnes and Burke help us understand the different patterns of politics created by bureaucratic legalism and adversarial legalism. The clarity and depth of their case studies make this a great book for both undergraduate courses and graduate seminars. (R. Shep Melnick, Thomas P. O'Neill Professor of American Politics, Boston College)

The 'global rise of judicial powe' has been called one of the most significant developments in late twentieth and early twenty-first century politics. In this book, Jeb Barnes and Thomas F. Burke examine the political consequences of the growing reliance on courts and litigation in public policy by analyzing the field of injury compensation, in which judicialized and bureaucratized programs operate side-by-side. Their study mixes quantitative data on a wide range of injury compensation policies with three in-depth case historical studies in which they trace political struggles over Social Security Disability Insurance, asbestos injury litigation, and the obscure but fascinating controversy over injuries purportedly caused by vaccines. They conclude that while social insurance programs that compensate for injury tend to bring social interests together, the use of litigation divides interests between victims and villains, winners and losers and so creates a comparatively fractious, chaotic politics.