Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2002

Abstract

Insurance law scholars and teachers sometimes feel, with a mixture of paranoia and justification, that insurance law simply does not receive its proper respect in the hierarchy of legal education and law generally.

Consider the law school curriculum. In none of America’s nearly 200 ABA-approved law schools in insurance law a required course. Nor is it considered a course that, although not required, prudent students “must” be sure to take before they graduate (e.g. Evidence, Corporations). Enrollments may be respectable but the class is seldom oversubscribed, even where the law school is located in an insurance hub city. Although other undoubtedly disagree I am confident this reflects a major shortcoming of legal education and misperception by legal educators (and law students). Insurance pervades the law, substantially impacting not only tort litigation but virtually all litigation, as well as regulatory schemes and the risk management practices that affect the dispute resolution climate.

Consider the legal literature. For the most part, insurance law is not the staple diet of law reviews or point-counterpoint debates in other legal periodicals, The law review audience is often treated to in-depth analysis of the very latest and most obscure developments in constitutional law or a “law and” topic but serious examination of insurance seldom dominate the page. To repeat a comment from the always quotable Judge Richard A. Posner, “many legal scholar who today are breathing the heady fumes of deconstruction, structuralism, moral philosophy, and the theory of the second best would be better employed… synthesizing the law of insurance.”

Publication Citation

2 Nev. L.J. 287 (2002).

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