Book Description: A wide-ranging history of the way legal scholars & judges have conceptualized the subject of torts, the reasons why changes in certain rules & doctrines have occurred, & the people who brought about these changes. White approaches his subject from four perspectives: intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge, the phenomenon of professionalization in the late 19th & 20th centuries in America, & the recurrent concerns of tort law since its emergence as a discrete field. He puts the intellectual history of this unique branch of law into the general picture of philosophy, sociology, & literature in what is not only a major work of legal scholarship but a tour de force for anyone interested in American intellectual history.